You Are the Bluest Light
by The Eye of the Crow
Summary: "My name is Connor and I have been designed for your pleasure. How can I please you today?" Apparently, Hank's so-called friends were a bunch of even bigger assholes than he had previously thought. They were juvenile dickheads with not an ounce of taste between them, and that's why they decided that him turning half of a century deserved a really special present. A fucking sexbot.
1. Chapter 1

**Part I - You'll Find it Hiding in Shadows**

"My name is Connor and I have been designed for your pleasure. How can I please you today?"

Apparently, Hank's so-called friends were a bunch of even bigger assholes than he had previously thought. They were juvenile dickheads with not an ounce of taste between them, and that's why they decided that him turning half of a century deserved a really special present _._ A fucking _sexbot_. Named Connor, on top of that.

 _Who the fuck names a sexbot Connor?_ was the thing that inappropriately ran through Hank's head as he stared at the android in front of him. Didn't they all have names, like, Valentino, or Ricky? Alessandro? Victor, maybe?Connor seemed like a slightly old-fashioned, sensible name, suited maybe for an elderly gardener who fussed over his begonias.

Definitely not for the ridiculously attractive boy android in front of him, with lips that appeared soft in a way Hank would never have expected plastic to be and dark eyes that looked deceptively expressive.

"My name is Connor and I have been designed for your pleasure. How can I please you today?" The android repeated in a slightly monotonous voice while his chocolate brown eyes scanned Hank for any reaction.

Hank groaned.

"You seem frustrated," the android – _Connor_ – observed. "May I interest you in oral intercourse? There is an 82% probability that it would help you relax," he suggested clinically.

"No shit," Hank muttered. His asshole friends not only bought him a sexbot, but one that was clearly malfunctioning. Weren't these things supposed to sound seductive? Lusty? _Sultry_? This one's invitation to sex sounded like a schoolteacher reading from a dishwasher manual.

"As far as I'm aware, defecation is not a standard part of this sort of interaction; however, if you so prefer, I'm sure we can-"

"Whoa!" Hank threw his arms in front of him. "Stop right there! That's one mental image I _really_ didn't need."

"I apologize. As I was designed for the specific purpose of copulation, not enough attention was paid to my vocabulary. I'm not used to human vernacular yet."

"Your vocabulary's just fine," Hank muttered in defeat. It was actually everything else that was the problem.

What the hell were those idiots even thinking? If they were making fun of him, why didn't they give him the bot during his birthday party earlier that evening, where everyone – everyone with a total lack of taste, that is – could laugh at the joke?

But having this thing delivered to his home in secret, so he could find it after his return, that was just – _sick_ , Hank thought, _I'm gonna be sick._

"Stay here," he managed to say, before he made a run for the bathroom. As he hurled the contents of his stomach consisting mostly of alcohol into the toilet bowl, a far more depressing reason started to surface in his still somehow clouded mind.

 _Pity_. They thought him so damn pathetic that they gave him an android to make him feel less lonely. _Well, fuck them_ , Hank thought with a sudden burst of venom as he furiously scrubbed his face free of any traces of vomit. _Fuck the whole lot of them for assuming that the gnawing hole in his gut could be filled with a piece of plastic._

Hank Anderson didn't need charity. Especially not of this kind.

 _Shit, was Gavin behind this idea?_ _I'll go and tell him where he can shove it,_ he thought, half-blind with righteous fury as he burst the bathroom door open. And almost hit Connor in the face.

The android was holding a steaming cup of something, which partly spilled over his fingers as he was forced to step back abruptly to avoid being hit. Hank thought he saw the android gave a minute flinch when the liquid touched those ivory fingers, but as everyone knew, androids didn't feel pain, so it must've been a trick of his tired mind.

"Didn't I tell you to stay?" Hank asked in mild puzzlement.

"I thought you could use some coffee," the android replied, handing him the cup.

Hank took a sip. Black, just how he liked his metal. Perfect. His idiotic friends apparently bought him the most expensive coffeemaker on the market.

"So you come with a morning-after routine, huh?"

"My protocols include some basic domestic tasks, yes," Connor said flatly and then proceeded to lick his coffee-stained fingers clean with an unexpected swipe of a pink tongue. For the first time this evening, Hank felt tentative stirrings of arousal _,_ as an unbidden image of that tongue licking _Hank_ clean came upon him.

 _I'm getting the hots for my coffeemaker_ , he mused with wry amusement. _And here I thought I couldn't sink any lower_.

"I'll just hit the sack," he said a little awkwardly after the pink tongue was safely hidden behind those soft looking – _kissable,_ a treacherous voice in his head whispered – lips.

"I'm going to sleep," he corrected himself a few seconds later, when he noticed the look of blatant incomprehension on the android's face.

Connor blinked. For a moment, he reminded Hank of an animal suddenly exposed to bright light, dazed, confused and somehow vulnerable.

"What are your instructions for me?" he asked and Hank really, _really_ needed to sleep, because he thought he could hear a note of uncertainty in that voice.

"Just go into stasis or do whatever you androids do at night," he mumbled in response and dragged himself to his bedroom without a second look at Connor.

"Good night, Lieutenant. Stasis mode initiated in 60, 59, 58…"

It was to this robotic droning that Hank dozed off, his last waking thought being _like counting fucking electric sheep._ Startled by the unexpected coffee offering, he had completely forgotten about his intention to call Gavin and yell at him to take his stupid plastic toy back. In his exhaustion, he also didn't think it in any way strange that the android called him _Lieutenant_.


	2. Chapter 2

Flashes of light were swimming behind Hank's closed eyelids, coalescing into colorful pools. He felt the bass resonate deep in his bones, forcing him to move along even though it was the type of music he normally loathed. Someone's fingers were digging into his hips in an almost painful way, and there was a delicious friction in his groin from where it was touching something warm and hard.

Hank shut his eyes even tighter, letting himself get lost in the moment, in the loud music that was arousing something primal and growling in him, in that unmistakably mildly rank smell that could be produced only by too many human bodies cramped together in too small a space, and above all of this in the feel of that stranger's body on his.

This was not Hank's usual scene. More like his usual _crime scene_ , actually. Such clubs were among favorite venues for red ice dealing, and where red ice was concerned, violence was never far away. Hank nostalgically looked back to the golden days when the government still thought that goddam _weed_ was the biggest problem on their hands.

The song ended and the DJ was now saying something to the crowd, something which Hank didn't quite catch over the din. Not that he cared. One of the hands previously gripping his hips let go of him, only to get hold of his right hand.

Hank opened his eyes to look at his fellow dancer, if you could call what they've been doing together dancing. _And well, wasn't that a surprise_. The forcefulness of the stranger's grip, the sheer energy with which he was grinding against Hank gave him an idea that was completely different from what he was seeing now. If he was picturing someone, it was a scruffy guy like himself, heavy-set, with a lumberjack style beard.

Instead, he saw a slim, clean shaven attractive man young enough to be his son dressed in a form-fitting white T-shirt and black skinny jeans, with doe-soft brown eyes and a boyish curl above his brow. He was looking at Hank like he was starving and Hank was a double bacon cheeseburger with extra cheese and extra bacon, and God if that look wasn't doing terrible things to Hank's nether regions.

 _Sweet Jesus. A motherfucking twink,_ Hank thought, giving the boy what must have looked like an unattractive gape. The young man looked him square in the eye, undeterred. He was still holding Hank's hand in a tight grip, tugging him to follow him somewhere. And Hank did, God help him.

From time to time, the boy stooped to look back at Hank with an encouraging smile and unmistakable hunger in his eyes. Hank swallowed. _Were they going to- right here at the club… No way._ He hadn't done anything like that since he was in his twenties.

Soon they left the crowded dance floor and Hank's suspicion was confirmed. The young man opened the door to the men's room and pulled Hank inside. There were two men standing at the urinals, but neither of them spared them a glance as they fell into one of the cubicles.

Hank's face felt hot. He couldn't believe this was happening.

The young man wasted no time in getting on his knees, his face bumping right into Hank's crotch in the narrow space. Hank let out an involuntary moan.

The man unzipped him and freed his cock with swift, efficient motions, as though he had done it a thousand times before. Well, maybe he did, for all Hank knew. He didn't even know the guy's fucking name, let alone his sexual history.

That didn't stop him from becoming painfully hard under that hungry dark gaze. When he saw those soft lips make a perfect "o", he had to shut his eyes and brace himself against the walls. That sight alone made him feel like coming right away, shooting his load all over that beautiful pale face – and that was an image he really didn't need, not if he didn't want to come before that pretty young thing had a chance to even touch him, which was frankly ridiculous at his age, and fairly embarrassing.

The next instant, all thoughts fled his head as a hot wet mouth enveloped the tip of his cock. Hank moaned in pleasure as that obviously well-practiced mouth slid up and down his swollen member, velvety tongue swirling around his foreskin, over his slit. Hank was barely able to remove one hand from the wall, burying his fingers into silken strands of hair. He was distantly aware that he was murmuring probably mostly incomprehensible encouragements and endearments, which after a while became just groans.

The stranger's talented lips slid down one more time, suddenly joined by a hand gently cupping his balls – _perfect_ , _just the way he liked it_ – and Hank couldn't hold back any longer.

"I'm gonna-" he managed to rasp before he came, right into that gorgeous mouth.

…

When Hank opened his eyes, he saw the cracks on the ceiling of his bedroom, familiar from those slowly dragging nights when whiskey alone wasn't enough to send him into instant oblivion.

 _That was a helluva wet dream,_ ran through his head as he blinked repeatedly to clear his vision. Then he looked down at his body and saw that it wasn't exactly a dream.

The young man from the club was right between his thighs, glancing at him through impossibly long lashes. There was a trickle of cum coming from the corner of his mouth. He gave it a slow, calculated lick, his eyes never leaving Hank's. Hank's breath hitched at his throat. That tongue made him seriously consider his refractory period.

But then his eyes fell on something that had not been a part of his dream and that he should've noticed right away. The circle of blue light on the man's temple.

 _No, that's no man. It's that fucking android!_ something screamed inside Hank's head as last night's events came crashing down on him.

"Get the fuck off me!" he snarled, recoiling until his back hit the headboard with an angry thud.

The android's LED light turned yellow and stayed like that for a moment. _Processing_.

"Was my performance not satisfactory?" Connor finally asked with a puzzled tilt of his head. "The fact that you've climaxed in a time 2.4 times shorter than is considered usual in human males your age suggests otherwise."

"That I've-" Hank started to say, then stopped himself. "Never mind. You've ever heard of that thing called 'consent'? Isn't _that_ a part of your goddamn program?"

The android still looked puzzled.

"You have explicitly said: 'C'mon baby, suck it, suck my dick,'" he said in an eerie emulation of Hank's intercoital voice.

Hank covered his eyes with his hands. _Fucking unbelievable._

"Just. Gimme a moment, would'ya? Alone," he added pointedly when Connor stayed rooted in place.

Connor's LED briefly flickered red and then went back to yellow. He climbed off the bed and left the bedroom without another word.

 _What a clusterfuck,_ Hank thought as he let his head fall back onto the pillow.


	3. Chapter 3

In the grey light of morning, Hank inspected the birthday card that was originally placed on the table next to which he found Connor standing last night.

The card was a simple piece of white cardboard that spelled "HAPPY BIRTHDAY". The colorful letters were made from newspaper clippings. _Lame-ass cop humor,_ Hank thought without a single trace of mirth.

There were no signatures, not that he needed any. He could picture his benefactors' faces easily enough. Gavin, grinning like a madman. Ben, laughing, but with sympathy in his eyes. Chris, too new to know why this was a terrible idea, just not wanting to be left out of the fun.

Never mind their actual motives, it still stung. Hank had thought he had lost the ability to feel offended, shrugging off remarks about his drinking and general unkemptness, just like Sumo got rid of buzzing flies with a lazy swing of his tail. But this, this was pretty damn offensive. And far beyond anything he could just brush off.

Hank took a look at the clock. It was seven thirty on a Sunday morning. A perfect time to give his fellow officers a piece of his mind.

"Fucking cowards, every single one of them," Hank cursed, after slamming his phone down on the kitchen table. At least it didn't have that stupid type of screen that was common in his youth, one that would break if you so much as looked at it the wrong way.

All of the suspects – his friends, if he could still call them that – had vehemently denied buying him a sex droid. That bastard Gavin even went as far as to suggest that Hankhad ordered the bot himself in a fit of drunken stupidity.

 _If only,_ Hank thought somewhat bitterly, thinking of the gun with one bullet waiting for him in the drawer. If only he had enough levity left in him to do such things when drunk, instead of his usual pastime.

 _So, what now?_

Obviously, the only sensible thing to do here was to read up on CyberLife's return policy. The android didn't exactly come with a warranty card, but surely Hank could explain the situation? He'd bet there were enough stupid fuckers out there that this sort of thing happened from time to time.

Better do it by email though, to spare himself at least some of the embarrassment. Hank took up his phone again, ready to go to CyberLife's website.

Before he had the chance to do that, however, he was interrupted by what was by now becoming a familiar voice.

"Good morning, Lieutenant. How can I please you today?"

Hank started at the intrusion. He hadn't met Connor on his way from the bedroom to the kitchen; the android had made himself scarce after the previous fiasco. He had probably spent the few more hours that Hank went on sleeping creepily standing in some dark corner, motionless like a statue.

Hank's mind started to form a reply somewhere in the lines that it would please him very much if the android fucked off to where he came from and stopped being Hank's problem, but as he looked at Connor to deliver it, all his thoughts froze.

Last night, Hank had been drunk and hadn't really given the android a proper look. Well, Connor had spoken up and told him his designation immediately upon Hank's return home, but now he realized that even if Connor hadn't said anything, the clothes would've been a dead giveaway.

A few months ago, a case led him to an android night club. He vaguely recalled that all the male workers he'd seen there had been in very revealing briefs.

Well, even those briefs would be preferable to what Connor was wearing. Or at least more dignified.

The android's current outfit consisted of navel revealing skintight black top laced together in the front with satin ribbons, with fishnets placed strategically over his pert nipples – seriously, how could Hank have missed _that_ before –, paired with a matching pair of boxer shorts no less tight, laced on both sides. _And hold on, was that a-_

Hank walked around Connor to sneak a look at him from behind, and then hastily retreated.

Yep. There was a goddamn hole on the back of those shorts _. Like a fucking invitation._

Hank hadn't even known such articles of clothing existed, and would've preferred it to stay that way.

The android was now giving him a quizzical look. Come to think of it, he tended to do that quite a lot.

"Look here," Hank said, with a calmness he didn't feel. "I'll tell you what we'll do."

He distantly wondered why he even bothered with explanations, but it felt like the right thing to do, so he went along with it. "My friends played a stupid joke on me and bought me a pleasure android. You."

Connor stared at him, not saying anything. Two of his fingers started playing with the laces on the front of that ludicrous outfit. Hank went on.

"And they are also fucking cowards, so they won't admit it and refuse to take you back. So what I want to do now is directly contact CyberLife and try to return you, so they can like, put you back on the shelf for someone who's actually into this stuff."

"CyberLife makes it their policy not to resell defective models," Connor said matter-of-factly.

"Huh?" Hank gave him an uncomprehending look, slightly distracted by the way the android's long fingers kept fidgeting with those laces.

"I'll be decommissioned and all my parts recycled."

Hank's mind was assaulted by a very vivid, unwanted image of Connor's fingers being torn from his hands, one by one.

"They gonna kill you?" slipped out of him before he could stop it.

"Of course not. As I'm not alive, I technically cannot be 'killed'," Connor said, his voice perfectly flat. Hank's attention, however, was on his fingers, which were no longer fidgeting. They were trembling.

"Fuck, you're shivering. Didn't know you could do that," Hank said quietly, automatically coming closer and reaching out a hand to run up and down Connor's bare forearm. The skin was cold to touch and unnaturally smooth, with no hair follicles to give it goose bumps, but the minute tremors running under Hank's fingertips made it feel almost human.

"Most models can't. I, however, am an advanced prototype of a new pleasure model, which has a few extra features to make it more lifelike," Connor explained.

"Such as?" Hank asked out of morbid curiosity, reluctantly retracting his hand.

"Sensors that emulate pain. Some owners prefer that in a pleasure android."

Before Hank had the time to digest this, Connor continued: "A recent study showed that sex crimes such as rape have decreased by 22 % since the introduction of pleasure androids. This upgrade aims to decrease this number even further."

His voice was perfectly steady, despite the shivers that still wrecked his frame.

"Are you trying to tell me that if I forced myself on you and roughed you up, it'd somehow benefit the human race?" Hank asked skeptically.

"You cannot force yourself on me," Cannot argued. "That would imply me having the ability to give or withdraw consent, which I don't possess."

 _God if this wasn't one of the weirdest conversations Hank had ever had._ Especially before his first morning cup of coffee.

"Would you like some coffee?" Connor asked as though reading Hank's mind.

Taking in Connor's earnest eyes and lithe body still shaking in that silly getup (while purposely trying not to dwell on that _mouth_ , for the sake of his own sanity), Hank reached a decision. A completely irrational one, running against all common sense, but one that didn't go against his gut feeling. Because Hank might have been shit at his job those horrible last few years, but he was still a cop through and through, and cops always followed their gut feeling.

"I'd love some coffee, actually," he said aloud, "but first things first."

Connor looked at him expectantly, and Hank took a deep breathe. On the surface, this was similar to a decision to keep or return an unwanted kitchen appliance. Below the surface, though… for some undecipherable reason, he felt like his choice had the potential to shift the axis of his entire universe.

"One, you're not going anywhere, for now at least," Hank spoke up at last.

"One, you're not going anywhere," Hank spoke up at last. "At least until I figure what to do with you, that doesn't involve CyberLife chopping you up into spare parts."

"Two, these clothes," his hand made a movement encompassing Connor's shirt and boxers, "must _burn_."


	4. Chapter 4

Connor picked up the hem of his shirt with both of his hands and promptly proceeded to haul it over his head.

"Jeez! I didn't mean literally!" Hank huffed before the android could start on his boxes shorts. Or look for matches.

"Wait here a second," he commanded. "Try not to burn anything until I return," he added as an afterthought before hastily heading for his bedroom.

He came back a moment later to the sight of Connor tightly hugging his naked torso. Even his teeth now appeared to be chattering. Hank threw his DPD hoodie and a pair of sweatpants at the android, together with some perfectly boring underwear. He turned his back to Connor and waited for him to finish changing.

"All done," the android announced and Hank turned to face him, assessing Connor's new look. The hoodie was too big and the pants probably too loose around the waist, but still it was a huge improvement, compared to that getup coming straight out of some fetishist porn site.

The sight of someone wearing his clothes made Hank experience some long-forgotten emotion, on which he chose not to dwell. _It'd just been a really long time since anyone did that; that was all there was to it._

His thoughts were abruptly interrupted when Connor picked up the discarded boxer shorts and held them to his face. A pink tongue darted from his mouth, giving the black garment a tentative lick.

"What the actual fuck!" Hank swore. _Did that really just happen?_

"I'm sorry to inform you that I've run an analysis on the material of my original attire, and it appears to be nonflammable," Connor announced serenely.

"You just licked your undies," Hank said, his tone taking on an accusing quality.

"Yes, to analyze the material," Connor explained patiently, as though that made any sense whatsoever, before continuing: "Since incineration is not an option, how do you want to dispose of these garments?"

"We'll just donate it to a homeless shelter or whatever," Hank snapped, his mouth obviously running on autopilot. "Just so you know – what you've just done? That was really fucking gross," he muttered, deeply aware that it was only a partial truth, because he also found the sight of Connor's tongue weirdly arousing, reminding him how it felt to be the one subjected to itsexplorations.

Connor just stood there clutching at those damn shorts, looking a little like a lost puppy and generally making things even more confusing for Hank.

Hank ran a hand over his face.

"Aright. I wanted to establish some house rules, so we'll make this number one – no licking anyone's underwear allowed. Got it?" he asked.

Impossibly enough, for a moment it looked like Connor wanted to argue the point – _the fuck's wrong with this droid_ – but then he gave Hank a short nod.

"Yes, Lieutenant."

Hank realized what had been nagging at him for a while.

"How do you know my rank?" he asked, not bothering to keep suspicion out of his voice.

"I've scanned you upon your arrival and saw it displayed together with your given name, date of birth, height, weight, body mass, alcohol consumption-"

"Okay, I got the picture," Hank stopped Connor before the android could freak him out even more. He was not one to tolerate such an invasion of his privacy. "Can you turn that shit off?"

Here was that quizzical tilt again. Then Connor opened his mouth to say something, but Hank remembered the android's difficulty with "human vernacular", so he interrupted him by quickly adding:

"I mean this scanning thing. Can you turn it off, at least with me?"

Connor furrowed his brows.

"A complete shutoff is impossible, but I might…tune it down, as you'd say? If I did that, my perception of you would approximate that of a human. Albeit one with superior observation skills."

Hank would be damned if that didn't come off just this side of smug.

"Do it then," he commanded.

Connor closed his eyes for a split-second.

"All done, Lieutenant," he announced.

"Good," Hank replied, and Connor's lips curved in the smallest of smiles, the first he'd seen on his face. At that sight, Hank's chest felt oddly constricted. He cleared his throat.

"So, another rule. Please don't call me that."

"Don't call you what?" the android asked in confusion.

"My rank. I'm not at work and you're not my subordinate."

"I beg to differ," Connor said. "According to my integrated dictionary, the word 'subordinate' means, first, 'belonging to a lower or inferior class or rank', and second, 'subject to the authority or control of another'. Even if you were right about the former meaning, the latter still holds true, because I am your property."

Hank was not in a mood to argue semantics with the android. He doubted he could win that particular battle, anyway.

"Whatever. Just call me by my damn name."

"Mr. Anderson?" Connor ventured.

"No! My _given name_ ," Hank retorted forcefully, his patience quickly evaporating. _What kind of fucked-up programing did Connor have that calling his owner by their given name was the very last option on the list?_

His unsaid question was answered the very next instant, when Connor said:

"Are you really sure you don't want to be called by your rank? My protocols suggest that it is a practice preferred by many owners. Even though 'master' seems to be an even more popular choice-"

"There's no way in hell I'm letting you call me _that_!" Hank interrupted him, exasperated. "Just call me Hank, will you? Why's that so goddamn hard?"

Connor's LED turned yellow for a moment before returning back to serene blue.

"I am sorry for my behavior. Your preferences have been duly noted. Hank."

"Great. And Connor," Hank went on, satisfying his absurd need to return the courtesy, "about this consent thing." He paused, taking a moment to compose his words while the android watched him in expectant silence.

"Do not perform any sexual acts on me when I'm not awake. Or better yet, do not perform any sexual acts on me, period. Because as I've already explained to you, I didn't exactly sign up for this."

Connor's LED light turned red. The expression of on his face could only be described as dejected.

 _Shit._ What Hank had just said probably ran against all of his protocols or something.

"You said you were able to do some domestic tasks, right?" he asked, trying to salvage the situation.

"I… yes, I have a skillset partially matching that of an AX400, meaning I can cook and do the laundry, as well as some basic cleaning," Connor explained, dejection giving way to the now familiar puzzlement.

"Awesome. You can start by making me that coffee," Hank told him firmly. "And put some whiskey in it while you're at it."


	5. Chapter 5

"Can you stop that?" Hank finally snapped.

"Stop what?" Connor asked, bending a little more to reach something on the lowest shelf of Hank's fridge.

"That thing you're doing." Hank'd be damned before he said anything like 'wiggling your butt'.

"You'll have to be a little more specific. I'm currently running over fifty different processes including sensory input and its analysis, motion control, breathing-"

"I'm not telling you to stop breathing!" Hank interjected indignantly.

"Well, as I technically don't need to breathe in order to function, you'd be well within your rights," Connor replied, once again making the conversation spiral somewhere into the deepest pits of hell.

"Just stop shaking that goddamn booty," Hank gritted through his teeth as though that could make his request any more dignified.

"Is it something related to my boot disk? Because I can assure you that it is well stabilized, and no physical activity commonly associated with household chores may present any damage to it."

"Forget it," Hank sighed and forced himself to unglue his eyes from that pert ass that kept fucking wiggling even as the android delivered his little speech, instead trying for the gazzilionth time to focus on the paperwork in front of him. Well, on the pad work, if you wanted to be precise. At least trees didn't have to die because of boring-ass reports anymore.

 _Human vernacular, huh._

If Connor wasn't a motherfucking robot, Hank'd be 100% sure he was doing this on purpose to rile him up. But with Connor being what he was… well, expecting a sexbot to instantly turn into a domestic model was probably too optimistic. Some glitches – _like making cleaning Hank's fridge look like a pay-per-view show_ – were to be expected.

And it wasn't like Hank had any better ideas what to do with the android. Returning him to CyberLife was off the table, so what else could he possibly do? Sell him on eBay? Yeah, he could totally see the product description: _Sexbot named Connor. Condition: used, like new._

"And what's this one's name?" A question made him lift his head from the pad he wasn't really watching to see what had captured Connor's attention.

The android in question was holding something that appeared like an extremely moldy cheese, which must have been in Hank's fridge since forever. He prayed that Connor would obey his command about not licking things, because this cheese should have been classified as a biological weapon.

Try as he might, Hank couldn't remember buying that particular grocery item, let alone its type, which was what Connor was obviously asking.

His silence must have lasted too long, because the android continued:

"You already told me that your other pet's name was Sumo, so I'm asking about this one."

"My… what?"

"Your pet. I'm aware that humans usually form attachments to more complex types of living organisms, but as you took pains to cultivate this mold to such a degree, I'm assuming you're extremely attached to it," Connor explained in a perfectly deadpan voice.

Hank stared at him for exactly two point five seconds.

"You ARE fucking with me!" he exclaimed, waving an accusatory finger in Connor's face.

"That's an activity you've expressly forbidden me from doing," Connor pointed out drily. "I was merely trying to make a joke," he clarified before adding: "I can do that, you know. I have thousands of integrated humor patterns that make me a decent conversation partner."

"In case someone wanted their sex life to turn into a stand-up comedy?" Hank asked, somewhat skeptical.

"Wouldn't that be more of a lie-down comedy?" Connor mused, and Hank resisted the urge to smack him.

"Please try not to make any more jokes," he said instead.

"I'll try," Connor replied solemnly. Hank had a bad feeling about this.

…

In the end, a duty call saved Hank both from boring desk work and watching Connor deliver his best performance of a wanton maid coming straight from an android porn flick – not like Hank ever watched any, while being the witness to some of the lamest attempts at humor ever directed at Hank's person.

 _Just who the hell programmed this robot_ , Hank had to wonder as he made his way to the station, his eyes fixed at the almost empty road in front of him.

With his hands firmly on the steering wheel and only Connor occupying his mind at the moment, the golden afternoon light sifting through the orange and red leaves of aspen trees made Hank feel almost at peace.

…

The case quickly managed to shatter any tranquility Hank might have felt.

Two boys aged fifteen and seventeen were found dead in an abandoned warehouse with multiple stab wounds, half naked and handcuffed. They had to be there for some time; they were barely identifiable when an unfortunate pair of bums found them. A run through the database showed that the boys had been missing for several weeks.

The trail was completely cold. There were no CCTV cameras as the warehouse was naturally located in one of the decaying parts of the city, and even drones scarcely frequented this area as it was virtually a ghost town, too inconvenient even for red ice dealers.

After a few hours of investigating the scene, there was nothing for them to do but wait for forensics.

The crime itself was horrendous and their chances to catch the perp less than slim. What had Hank really shaken, though, was a video call to the older boy's parents. After receiving the terrible news, the mother started to weep quietly, but the father's expression turned stony.

"That boy's had it coming," he had said in a voice that didn't leave any room for doubt. "Left school, joined the wrong crowd. He was as good as dead to me anyway."

Victim blaming as a defense mechanism, probably. Hank had seen that one more times than he could count. It didn't make it any less horrible.

His thoughts were still on the case when he entered his house later that night and went into the living room. He didn't need to turn on the light to find his liquor cabinet. He poured himself a drink of scotch, then another.

Sumo let out a small whine in his sleep. Hank's gaze turned to the direction of the sound. His couch, naturally. His eyes, already accustomed to the dark, discerned a silhouette of a dog lying there. And then that of someone lying together with the dog, one pale arm thrown over the St. Bernard's flank.

"What the fuck," he said and abruptly reached for the light.

The fragile illusion of humanity of his dog's companion dissolved as the prone figure's eyes snapped open and it abruptly sat up. Sumo made a low keening noise, but did not stir.

A voice completely devoid of any sleepiness said:

"I apologize for going into stasis on your couch. I planned on standing in the corner like last night, but your dog wished to be petted. I kept doing so, until I went into stasis without my volition, it seems."

Hank just stood there, speechless. Truth to be told, he had been so preoccupied with work that he completely forgot about the android's existence. Yet, here he was, sitting on Hank's couch, petting Hank's dog and wearing Hank's clothes. It was too much.

Connor, obviously mistaking Hank's silence for disapproval, continued, the pitch of his voice raising just a little:

"As my presence here is unwelcome, especially now after I've accomplished my mission and cleaned your home, I wanted to avoid imposing myself on you."

Hank rubbed his eyes.

"You're not imposing, kid," he sighed as he sat down heavily on an armchair opposite the couch. For a machine, Connor surely was a dramatic one.

"What do you mean, cleaned my home? Like, all of it?" he asked while taking a look around himself. And blinked. Because it sure as hell didn't look like this when he left.

Given the rate Connor's was going at Hank's fridge, Hank didn't really think he would progress beyond kitchen anytime soon. Yet here was his living room completely stripped of takeaway boxes, empty bottles and suchlike and all of its wooden surfaces positively shining. A fresh scent of pine wafted in the air.

The fridge had probably been the worst of it, Hank concluded logically, but couldn't shake the feeling that maybe in his absence, Connor's cleaning style lost some of its allure and gained in efficiency instead.

"As I said before, I'm only equipped with the most basic of domestic routines, so I couldn't do more advanced tasks such as waxing your floors or cleaning the inside of the washing machine," Connor explained. "But given the state of your house, I've assumed those things are not a priority for you."

 _Did that robot just sass me?_ Hank thought a little incredulously, but didn't let himself be distracted from the main point.

"We humans, we're messy. If all it took was just one big cleanup, we wouldn't need any droids to tidy up after us every day. Didn't your supercomputer brain think of that?"

Connor just stared at him with those big chocolate eyes. Hank cleared his throat.

"What I'm trying to say is that your work here's far from done. We'll find some use for you yet," he said and winced at how suggestively that came out.

"I meant things like shopping," he clarified hastily, and was it just a trick of light, or did the android seem disappointed?

"You can go back to stasis," Hank said, decisively ignoring the tricks his tired mind was playing on him. "And stay right where you are. I'm much more comfortable with you lying here on the couch than sneaking up on me from some dark corner."


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: To the anonymous reviewer who commented on the cheese: this was actually inspired by a certain shared fridge I saw in an all-male dorm. The things in there… *shudders*. I took a picture on my camera, but the camera deleted it :D

The second morning after he had found the pleasure android in his house, Hank came into a kitchen that looked remarkably different from the one he left just the day before. Countertops were clean and shiny. After all the accumulated garbage had been removed, appliances he forgot he owned emerged from oblivion. The washed window let in fresh morning light.

Connor was waiting for him by the table.

"Good morning, Hank," he greeted him. "I wanted to make you breakfast, but I didn't know your tastes. There aren't many options, however, as I had to get rid of most items from your refrigerator. Maybe just some plain toast? With coffee, of course."

"That'd be awesome," Hank said and seated himself at the opposite side of the table. In just a moment, he was treated to a steaming mug of pitch black coffee and a golden-brown slice of toast.

He took a bite, enjoying the crunchiness. He had taken to eating toast bread unbaked, just something to appease his hunger when he couldn't find it in himself to order a takeaway. This was a lot better.

He was going to start on the coffee, when his eyes fell on a carefully polished picture frame and he saw his son's smile, forever frozen in time. Forever beyond his reach.

He abruptly turned to face the android.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Connor said quietly. There was something like real sympathy in his voice, and it punched Hank right in the gut.

"I told you to turn it off!" Hank lashed out.

"You have a habit of commanding me to switch off my various functions," Connor replied evenly. "Could you please clarify?"

The android's calm demeanor pissed Hank off.

"Turn off your snooping," he spat out, only to be met with a blank stare.

"The scanning, for God's sake," he amended, some of the anger leaving him already.

"Oh," Connor said quietly. "I thought that particular taboo was related only to your person."

"And _I_ thought that stuff important to me went without saying," Hank retorted.

"I didn't know this picture was important to you until I scanned it," Connor pointed out, quite logically.

"Yeah, because humans usually have pictures of random strangers lying about their houses," Hank snapped.

"I don't really know such things," Connor said in a small voice.

Hank sighed, feeling deflated.

Maybe he was being a little unfair here. After all, he remembered a guy from TV who had a motherfucking stuffed giraffe in his living room. Some painter type, if his memory served him right. Humans were weird.

Anyway, there were matters like setting boundaries, which were hard for him to navigate even with a human partner. With an android, he was totally at sea. So he did what he knew best; he downed the mug of coffee and stood up, leaving the half-eaten toast on the table.

"I'm gonna take Sumo for a walk," he muttered and then he was gone.

…

That particular morning walk with Sumo turned much longer than their usual two blocks. The dog seemed strangely energetic, as though it was not fall but spring coming into town. Hank let Sumo tug him here and there, watching him chase colorful leaves drifting in the cold breeze while trying not to think about anything in particular.

In the end, he returned home just in time to change for work, letting Sumo fall on his dog bed in a state of exhausted bliss. Hank wished that happiness came to humans just as easily.

He found Connor standing by a living room window, idly playing with a coin.

"I'm off to work," Hank said when Connor's eyes met his. "Like you said, there's next to nothing to eat here, so your task for today is to get some grocery shopping done."

"What are your preferences?" Connor asked. Hank just gave him an impatient wave of his hand.

"As long as it's food, I really don't care. Get wild," Hank said and threw his credit card at Connor, who deftly caught it between two of his fingers.

…

His parting words, delivered on a whim, had probably been a mistake, Hank thought as he eyed the offerings in front of him.

"You're expecting me to eat Brussels sprouts AND broccoli at the same time? With the side helping of _tofu_? That's not even a real dish," he protested.

"Who decided that?" Connor challenged him.

"I did," was Hank's petulant reply. "And what's in that glass? Blood?"

"That's beet juice. You told me, and I quote, 'As long as it's food, I really don't care'," Connor said and Hank made a mental note to forbid Connor from using his own voice in the future, because it really was fucking creepy. _But first things first._

"You androids are supposed to be great at logic, ain't you? I know I should've told you more about what I liked, but why didn't you try, I dunno, analyzing the leftover stuff in my fridge, to see what kind of things I eat?"

"I have done that," Connor retorted. "And I was amazed at how you're still alive."

Hank himself had wondered about that. Connor went on:

"Given the data I gathered from my initial scanning that was unlikely subject to change in the 1.83 days elapsed since then, during which time I was forbidden to carry out further analyses, your cholesterol level is more than twenty points higher than the recommended level. This is why, after consulting the Internet for some time, I selected broccoli as a great cholesterol reducer. Also, regarding your blood pressure-"

"Yeah, yeah, I'd totally wanna hear all this if I actually wanted to take care of myself," Hank interrupted him gruffly.

Connor blinked.

"You don't?"

Hank leaned on his elbows and rubbed his temples. He shouldn't have said that; he didn't really want to have this particular conversation.

"Look, tofu's okay when it's not gummy like this. If you fry it in a pan, it gets crispy and I'm fine with that. But I fucking loathe Brussels sprouts, alright? Not a big fan of broccoli, either."

Connor nodded, obviously storing this information in his impressive memory. Hank made an effort to eat at least some of the tofu and one symbolic piece of broccoli, before he went to the fridge to retrieve a beer to get some actual nutrition.

"Wow. You really did get wild," he groaned upon opening the fridge door. The prevailing color of the items inside was now green, and for once it had nothing to do with mold, but with a plethora of fresh vegetables, some of which Hank had never seen before in his life.

…

On the third day after Hank discovered Connor in his kitchen, his doorbell rang. When he opened the door, he found himself face to face to Helen, his dog-walker, a twenty something college girl with dreadlocks and braces.

"Hi Hank. You haven't been answering my texts, so I stopped by to see if you and Sumo were okay."

Hank sheepishly scratched his head. He got her texts; he just didn't have the time to figure out the best way to tell her that he wouldn't need her services anymore.

Helen frowned, suspicion clear on her face.

"Did you find some other dog-walker? A friend who lives in the area told me she saw a Saint Bernard with a young guy in a hoodie. She even took a picture for me, and there's no way that dog wasn't Sumo. So please be honest with me."

"I… no, it's not like that," Hank muttered.

Helen eyed him expectantly, her expression urging him to go on.

"I got an android. He takes care of Sumo now. I should've told you right away, but I was kinda busy," he said, trying to keep his explanation as brief as possible.

This was clearly the last thing Helen expected him to say.

"An android? Like, for real? I thought you hated those!" she exclaimed.

Hank blinked in mild surprise.

Did everyone know that about him? He didn't really talk to people that much. But Helen had always struck him as perceptive. There were a few things in his life Hank truly cared about anymore, but he actually conducted honest-to-God job interviews with the few dog-walkers that had answered his adto ensure Sumo got the best possible care when Hank's job forced him to keep insanely long hours.

"It was sort of an accident. A misplaced gift," he hesitantly explained further.

"What kind of bot is he?" Helen asked curiously.

"Domestic," Hank lied.

"That's funny, because he doesn't look like any kind of domestic model I know. He's like, ridiculously hot," Helen said, suspicious again.

 _Tell me about it,_ Hank groaned inwardly. 

He should probably get mad at her for her nosiness, but as this was probably the last time he was seeing her, and she had been really great up to this point, never letting him down even if he called her drunk from some ditch, he thought that he might just as well tell her the truth.

"He's actually a pleasure droid. Some guys at work thought they were being super funny."

"That's one really expensive joke. They're like, five thousand bucks. Don't ask me how I know," Helen said with an embarrassed laugh.

Helen really was fucking perceptive. Probably more perceptive than him. After living for so long in a timeless limbo, there were now actual things happening in his life, and he _wasn't paying enough attention._

Also, having Connor wander about the neighborhood wearing Hank's Detroit Police Department hoodie was pretty dumb on his part. It seemed like some more shopping was in order.


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: Thanks everyone who reviewed! This chapter concludes the first arc of the story, so the next one might take a while. Until then!_

"Do you want me to dress more appropriately for a domestic servant?" Connor asked in a perfectly neutral voice.

Hank was visited by a brief vision of Connor waiting on him on hand and foot while dressed in a black tailcoat, with a silver tray in one white-gloved hand.

"No," he said resolutely. "You can wear whatever you want, I don't care."

"The fact that we're here at all suggests otherwise," Connor pointed out.

"Just pick something already, I don't wanna be here all day," Hank urged him, choosing not to rise to the bait. "When you pick something, go try it over there. I'll just wait here by the registers."

For a moment, Connor's LED light flashed yellow, but then he gave Hank a single nod and headed for the men's section.

Hank took out his phone and started idly scrolling through his newsfeed, not really seeing the words. _Just another bizarre situation that could've been easily avoided_. He could have just made Connor buy some clothes on the Internet, the way he had ordered the groceries. But he had a few hours to waste on a sunny September afternoon, and taking his android out to a mall seemed like a better option than wasting _himself_ , which was what he usually did.

 _His android._ Hank stopped the mindless scrolling, for a moment freezing completely. For better or worse, it seemed like Connor was becoming a permanent fixture in his life, and that thought unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

He tried to concentrate on anything else, like the two women furiously debating bra sizes just a few feet on the left from him, but it was no good, he was getting a revelation in fucking H&M, and had no idea how to deal with it.

At that instant, his panicked thoughts were interrupted by a light tap on his shoulder. He jumped at the touch, swearing under his breath.

It was of course Connor, who was now wearing a pair of rather subdued dark blue jeans, paired with an extremely garish Hawaiian shirt that mixed together shades of bright yellow, vibrant green and dazzling magenta. He turned around for Hank, who raised his eyebrows.

Strangely enough, this outfit looked good on the android, but well, that happened when you looked like a goddamn model. No, Hank had an entirely different issue with Connor's choice.

"Really? Out of everyone on Earth, you chose to copy _my_ style?" he asked dubiously, thinking of a similar, if a little less loud shirt in the back of his closet.

Connor smoothed down the fabric of the shirt and gave him a slightly defiant look.

"Well, as I've seen far from 'everyone on Earth' yet, and from the people I did see I've spent the incontestably greatest amount of time with you, you were the most logical choice."

Hank contemplated the hyena-like laughing pineapples on the shirt and thought that 'logical' was probably the last word he'd use here, but whatever. It was still a lot better than what he had been kind of expecting – for Connor to try to emulate his original outfit. You couldn't get all that wild in the H&M's men's section, but the android had already proven himself full of surprises.

He could just leave it at that, let Connor buy several more similar sets and be done for the day. However, something prompted him to ask:

"Do you even like this shirt?"

"I do find the design cheerful," Connor replied.

"I guess there's that, but do you think it's, I dunno," Hank was grasping for the right word, "something made for you?"

Connor looked at him with his LED light spinning rapidly.

"We are in a retail store, so nothing in here is tailor made," he said after a few seconds, clearly uncomprehending.

"No, I meant, whether this," Hank jabbed his index finger right into a laughing pineapple's face, "feels _right_ for you? And I don't mean the right size," he quickly added when he saw the android open his mouth.

Connor promptly closed it again. His LED light turned yellow.

"I don't understand," he confessed after a moment. "I do not have feelings, so there is no way for me to 'feel' anything regarding these clothes, or anything else for that matter. Can you please rephrase the question?"

"Forget it," Hank muttered with a pang of disappointment. But really, what was he expecting? He should keep himself in check; forgetting Connor wasn't human wouldn't do him any good.

"Just go change back, grab a few more shirts and pants in same size and I'll pay for it," he said tiredly.

The android did as Hank said without a word. Soon afterwards, he returned with three pairs of pants and three shirts, and Hank took those from him, equally silent.

He made a few steps towards the nearest register, when he was stopped by Connor's voice:

"This. I want this one," was what he said while pointing at something that looked like a baseball jacket, with a steel blue front, black sleeves, a black breast pocket and a mandarin collar.

Hank looked at him in surprise.

"What, d'you like it?"

"I have realized I need something warmer than a shirt. Your house is rather chilly and the weather will turn cold any day now."

"Makes sense," Hank nodded, and moved to take the jacket from the racks, but Connor wasn't done.

"Also, the design is…" he began to say but stopped without finishing his sentence, for once not finding the right word in his vast vocabulary.

"I would say familiar," he ventured after a beat of silence. "Yet, I have no memories of any such article of clothing so that cannot be correct. I have no frame of reference for this. But I'd ask you to purchase it anyway."

Hank gave him a long, considering look. The jacket actually looked similar to something he'd seen some other androids wearing, but he couldn't remember what type. Definitely not pleasure droids, though. Never mind that; anything was better than Connor's original outfit.

He made Connor try it on, and it fitted him perfectly; steel blue seemed to be his color.

In the end, they bought two more white shirts then went well with the jacket, and some socks and underwear as an afterthought.

They walked through the mall, passing shops with mostly human visitors and android employees surrounded by a considerable amount of potted greenery. The building was originally an old factory, with an enormous vaulted glass roof that let enough sunlight inside that artificial lighting was not necessary during the day. Hank hated most malls, but this one was almost bearable, so he used to come here relatively a lot.

This is what he realized when they passed a children's playground full of painted dinosaurs, and he was assaulted by an onslaught of memories. Because it was at this very playground where he played with Cole on numerous occasions while Cole's mom went shopping.

 _Fuck, he was stupid for coming here_.

Hank felt that his lower lip was starting to tremble, so he picked up the pace. Connor copied him while throwing him a worried glance.

Hank didn't say anything. Thankfully, Connor didn't ask.

They left the building, walking silently side by side. The sky was turning red, with gentle crimson clouds floating weightlessly towards the horizon. Hank didn't feel like returning home just yet. He considered stopping at his usual bar, but then he realized it had a _no androids allowed_ sign stuck to the door.

 _A change of venue, then_ , he thought and looked around for a suitable place. He found it soon after they entered a mostly residential area with identical brick semi-detached houses. At the end of one row of such buildings, there was a distinctly different one-story house, painted light blue, with a small front courtyard.

A big signboard that read 'NIRVANA PUB' was hanging above the rounded entrance door. Another, smaller sign located on the door proclaimed that 'All Beings Under the Sun Were Welcome', and Hank was starting to get the picture of what kind of establishment this was.

Just a few days ago, Hank would have avoided this place like the plague. Yet here he was, entering the little garden with Connor in tow. Despite the light breeze brought on by the falling dusk, the evening air was still pleasantly warm, enough for Hank to forgo the opportunity to inspect the inside of the pub, choosing instead to stay in the courtyard.

All iron wrought round garden tables were empty, except for one occupied by a lone man intently staring at his touchpad. Hank sat down, naturally selecting a table in the corner overlooking the street.

A human waitress came to take their order. When Hank looked her in the eyes, he felt a shiver of revulsion running through his body. The irises were blood red, and the silver pupils appeared distinctly metallic, with a neat circle of little dark holes fringing the rim.

Those were no contacts; it was definitely an example of human augmentation, and probably illegal. _What the hell was it even supposed to do, see in the dark? Get data from looking at things the way androids could? Suck human souls?_ Hell if Hank knew, and he had zero intention to ask.

"Hello, what can I get you?" she said in a perfectly normal voice, as though she wasn't looking at him with demonic eyes, and Hank was forcefully reminded of why he usually stuck to his bar.

"A beer, whatever's on tap," he replied flatly.

"Some thirium for your droid?" she asked, in a manner people inquire whether you need water for your dog.

Hank gave Connor a quizzical look.

"D'you want that stuff?"

"My thirium level is 5.4% below optimal, so yes, please," Connor said.

"You heard him," Hank said to the waitress, whose hand was poised expectantly over her touchpad, which made her and her blood-red eyes finally leave Hank's field of vision.

 _Thirium, huh_. Hank knew it was the blue stuff androids had instead of blood. He didn't know they could drink it, too, given that one of the precious few things he did know about androids was that they didn't eat or drink, period.

The fact they drank their own 'blood' was kind of – not exactly gross but definitely weird in Hank's book. But that was androids for you.

He glanced at his companion, who was inspecting an ornamented drink coaster in front of him. A lock of windswept hair kept falling in his eyes, and Hank had to resist the urge to brush it off for him.

Hank let out a barely noticeable sigh.

He really didn't know jackshit about androids, and his carefully cultivated state of ignorance was obviously unsustainable, if he were to coexist with one.

"What do you need for, uhm, optimal functioning?" he asked Connor.

Connor's long fingers stopped retracing the mandala pattern on the coaster and he raised his eyes to meet Hank's.

"Regular thirium replenishments, depending on my activity level. An access to a docking station, but I can use a public one."

Hank thought of all those androids motionlessly standing in rows on the streets.

"No, I'll buy one for the house," he said decisively.

"I have to warn you that it's rather expensive," Connor told him.

"If I cared about money that much, you think I'd buy a fucking Saint Bernard? Can you imagine how much dog food he eats in a month, and how much that costs?"

Connor's LED light spun for a few seconds, before he spoke up:

"Well, the Internet tells me that it should be about 24 kg of food, and when I multiply it with the current price of the brand I saw at your home, it would be 128 dollars. The docking station, however, costs over two thousand."

Hank frowned. _Two could play this game._

"We're talking about just one month, and you're excluding all the nutritional supplements I gotta buy for Sumo's joints. That makes quite a lot over the years, and this docking station of yours is a one-off expense, isn't it?"

"Not exactly; you're forgetting the additional expense it will cause for your monthly electricity bill. Given there is a perfectly serviceable docking station within a walking distance from your house, I don't see how-"

"The point is I said I'll buy you the damn thing!" Hank interrupted him, his temper flaring. "Why are we even arguing about this?"

Connor opened his mouth to say something, but was prevented from doing so by the arrival of the waitress bringing their drinks.

 _At least the service here's fast,_ Hank thought as he took a sip of his beer, eyeing Connor's thirium drink, which came in a cocktail glass, complete with a straw and a little yellow paper umbrella.

Connor sipped through the straw, looking at Hank with half-lidded eyes. Hank swallowed and hastily took another sip from his own beer. And then he felt something lightly touching his ankle.

Connor had, unbeknownst to Hank, removed one of the shoes they had purchased prior to the clothes, and was now slowly sliding his socked foot up and down Hank's denim-clad leg, from the ankle to the knee.

Hank knew he should put a stop to this right at this instant, remind Connor of the rules he had set. But he found himself frozen to the spot, unable to articulate any objections.

There had been rumors, recently, about some androids going rogue, even mauling their owners. This behavior was called 'deviant'.

The way Connor was looking at him intently while sipping at his thirium, one foot lightly caressing Hank's calf while his temple light stayed clear, unperturbed blue, now _that_ was what Hank'd call deviant. Hank had to wonder why Connor tried so adamantly to seduce him. His original programming must have been deeply ingrained.

He should remind Connor that this was not what Hank wanted from him, right on the contrary. _In a moment_ , he told himself.

For now, he just let his eyes fall closed and focused on the sun and breeze that in turn warmed and cooled his face, and on the impossibly gentle touch of the android sitting in the chair opposite to him.

For the first time in God knew how long, he felt alive.

 _A/N: Here's a picture of Bryan Dechart for this chapter:_ _vrakobor (d o t) kvalitne (d o t) cz (slash) bryan (d o t) jpg  
_

 _Just imagine thirium in his glass instead of wine ;)_


	8. Chapter 8

**Part II - Just Tell Me It's Tearing You Apart**

 _A/N: This story is now divided into three parts. The first part spanning chapters 1 to 7 is called "You'll Find it Hiding in Shadows". We're now about to enter part 2, which will be more plot and angst heavy, and bring more cameos from the rest of the DPD crew. Enjoy!_

The rest of September and the first days of October passed in a blur. At the station, they were doing their best to solve the warehouse murders, but just as Hank feared, the forensics didn't help them one bit, too much time having elapsed since the crimes. They were investigating one unpromising lead after another, and everyone suspected that it was merely a matter of time before the double homicide would get filed away among cold cases.

Meanwhile, Connor subjected Hank to his attempts at healthy cooking, which thankfully didn't involve any more Brussels sprouts or broccoli, and sometimes he even graciously let Hank have some steaks.

He reorganized Hank's bookcase, reading about half of it in the process after Hank had told him that no, he didn't really care for color-coding, preferring instead to group books by their contents.

He took Sumo for ridiculously long walks in the increasingly cold weather, and Hank allowed himself to be dragged along when he could find the time. They started to play a little game on those walks, one where Hank would tell Connor random observations about the people they saw on the streets, and Connor would then proceed to scan those unsuspecting passersby to confirm or refute Hank's observations while adding some input of his own.

They were finishing one such walk right now, passing through a mostly deserted park close to Hank's house. It was getting dark fast; the orbs of streetlamps were already lit, painting pools of yellow light on their path.

For the moment, Hank's mind was blissfully empty. He was concentrating on nothing but breathing in the crisp autumn air, when Connor took one of Hank's hands into his.

 _Shit_ , Hank thought, feeling himself going completely stiff. But he couldn't honestly say that he didn't bring this upon himself.

After he had let Connor touch his leg at that pub, the android obviously figured that touching Hank in a not overtly sexual manner was a go, so he started to do that a lot. Most of those were casual touches, the likes of which were exchanged between friends and family members without a second thought; he'd take Hank's elbow to stir him somewhere, tap his shoulder to get his attention. Their hands would brush when he handed Hank his mug.

Some touches were different. When Connor passed Hank sitting at the table, he would gently brush his back in a way that could only be described as a caress. And when he watched TV with Hank, his head would end up on Hank's shoulder, making it difficult for Hank to concentrate on the screen.

There was no reason to keep a fucking catalogue of those occurrences in his head, yet Hank did it anyway.

Connor seemed content that Hank let him have this, not trying for anything bolder. Hank had eventually come to the conclusion that Connor's pleasure programming simply made him touch starved. When he went too long without touching Hank, he spent an enormous amount of time petting Sumo or, if Sumo got fed up with that, just wanting to sleep in peace – Hank would have never believed that was even possible – fidgeting with his coin, like an addict trying to substitute the object of his craving.

That tic of his grated on Hank's nerves, so he usually just let Connor touch him without any objections. It was easier this way.

Yet, this October evening found him frozen to the spot under a streetlamp, dumbly staring at his and Connor's joined hands like it was the most perplexing thing in the universe.

Connor's fingers felt cold. Hank wanted to say that they'd need to do some more shopping for things like gloves and scarves, but was unable to get out a single word.

Sumo gave them an impatient huff, tugging at the leash in Hank's other hand.

Connor slowly relaxed his grip, letting Hank's hand fall numbly to his side.

"What do you think of the lady with the Doberman?" the android asked as though nothing had just happened, pointing to the darkness between the trees in front of them. As if on cue, Sumo started to bark furiously and surely enough, a blond woman wearing a tight-fitting leather jacket with the said Doberman stepped out from the dark, soon followed by a slightly older balding man.

"She's cheating on him," Hank fired away.

"On the Doberman?" Connor retorted with his eyebrows raised.

Hank let out a weak chuckle, feeling oddly grateful.

"On the baldie, smartass. Now let's get home before we freeze our asses off."

…

"The vic's name's Carlos Ortiz, twenty nine years old, killed by twenty eight stab wounds. Had a domestic android who's gone missing. All bets say the droid went full psycho, did him in and ran away."

"I'll take it," Hank said, and Jeffrey Fowler's eyes widened in an almost comical surprise.

"What, no 'I hate those plastic pricks, want nothing to do with them' bullshit like you gave me just a few weeks ago, when I tried to assign you that android trafficking case?"

Hank just shrugged his shoulders.

"Can't a guy change his mind?"

Fowler was staring at him with growing suspicion.

"A guy sure can, but a stubborn asshole like you? No way," he scoffed.

Hank didn't rise to the bait, instead opting to treat Fowler to another noncommittal shrug.

Fowler gave him a slow, calculating look.

"Hank, did you lose weight?" he asked finally.

Hank shifted on his feet.

"Maybe?" he ventured.

"You've also started to arrive less late for work. And less drunk," Fowler said slowly. Hank could all but see the rapid calculations going off in his superior's head.

 _If Jeffrey was an android, his LED light would be yellow for sure_ , Hank thought, mildly amused at the idea of a robotic Fowler.

"Did you… find someone?" the police chief asked him, an unusual hesitation creeping into his voice.

The first thing that flashed through Hank's mind was 'yeah, I found a sexbot in my kitchen and we're playing house now', but there was no way he was telling Fowler that. Instead, he chose to go on to the offensive:

"Not really. Just finally got a grip on myself, can't you be a little more supportive?"

"Hank," Fowler said gently, as though speaking to a small child. "Gavin told me he saw you eating a _packed lunch_ in the break room a few days ago. A _packed lunch_ that looked like a _salad_. Do you honestly expect me to believe you suddenly went from living off three day old takeaway to making your own fucking _vegetarian packed lunches_?"

 _Shit_. Hank should've forbidden Connor from doing this after all. But the android had just looked at him with those Bambi eyes and told Hank that it would be an _illogical waste_ since he had already packed it and everything, and Hank had just… caved in.

"There was some chicken in it, actually," he said defensively.

"That's not the fucking point, Hank! I thought we were friends, and now it seems like some pretty important things are happening in your life, and you're keeping me out of the loop," Fowler told him accusingly.

Hank ran a hand over his face.

"Jeez, cut me some slack, Jeff. It's not like that, okay?" he argued weakly.

Fowler was eyeing him with a stony expression, obviously unconvinced. On one hand, Hank was a little pissed off, because it really wasn't Jeff's fucking business. On the other, though, he remembered all the times his old friend had to cover for him and clean up his messes. If it hadn't been for him, he'd have been out of the job a long time ago, with infinitely more time and motivation to play Russian roulette.

"Remember my last birthday?" he asked in a resigned tone.

"Yeah, what about it? By the way, didya like that special ale selection six-pack?"

Hank had a vague recollection of the gift in question, containing what was supposedly the best six ales from around the world. These days, he didn't really care exactly what he drank as long as it had alcohol in it, but it was a nice thought. He had, however, just dumped it on the kitchen table when he came from the party – if it could've been called that at all, with just him, Jeff, Gavin, Ben, Chris and two more members of the force having a few drinks at a bar close to the station – and not touched it since. He might have seen it in the fridge later, after Connor was done with his purge.

 _Hell, Fowler's right, I've really been drinking less_ , he realized with a start.

"I meant the morning after," he said aloud.

"How could I forget?" Fowler snorted. "You called me and apparently everyone else in the station and yelled at us for giving you a goddamn sexbot for your birthday. We thought you finally drank yourself out of your mind. If you didn't show up for work later that day, I'd have checked up on you in person."

"So it really wasn't you clowns?"

Fowler shook his head mutely.

"But there was this card," Hank persisted," it had letters made with goddamn newspaper clippings, so I thought-"

"The card came with the six-pack, you dumbass," Fowler interjected.

"Oh," was all Hank said. Fowler's features twisted into an ugly grimace.

"Wait a minute. You're trying to tell me that these last two weeks, you've been living with an _actual sexdroid_?!"

"I retrained him as domestic help," Hank mumbled.

Fowler started at him for a moment before throwing his hands in the air in mock surrender.

"So when we denied giving you that thing, you just kept it, no questions asked? Don't you see it's fishy as fuck, Hank? You're a goddam detective, aren't you at least curious? Those things are fucking expensive; no one's just gonna drop one on your doorstep without expecting something in return. There's gotta be some ulterior motive!"

Hank didn't say anything to this but inside he was fuming, his previous irritation coming back with a vengeance. He tried his hardest to keep himself from lashing out at his boss.

"Did you _at least_ try asking the droid itself where it came from?" Fowler barked at him.

"No but I'll do it, if it makes you happy. Now if you don't mind, I've got a case to solve," Hank snapped before stomping out of Fowler's office.

"Wait! You forgot the fucking file!" Fowler called after him before he had the time to slam the door.

…

They were relaxing on the couch in front of Hank's TV, with Sumo gently snoring underfoot. Hank glanced at his companion. For once, Connor's head was not on his shoulder, resting instead on the armrest opposite from Hank. One of his socked feet was lightly brushing Hank's clothed thigh. He was wearing Hank's hoodie again; even after they bought him his own clothing, the android didn't seem willing to relinquish his hold on it and Hank didn't force the matter.

The TV was on, but Connor's eyelids were closed, his dark lashes a stark contrast against the pale skin of his cheeks. Hank himself didn't even know what they were watching, his mind wandering elsewhere.

By all rights, it should be on the new investigation. It was a gruesome business; Ortiz was bled like a pig, some of his blood being used for deranged writings on the wall. Then there was that disturbing offering in the shower, serving God knew what purpose. They found no traces of the victim's android. Hank had a feeling that this case had a potential to turn into something far nastier than a simple homicide.

Yet, his mind stubbornly kept replaying his conversation with Fowler, who downright accused Hank of being stupid for not questioning Connor's sudden arrival in his life.

The thing was that deep down, Hank started to suspect that his initial theory wouldn't hold right after that brief conversation with Helen, which was almost two weeks ago.

He thought of asking Connor himself immediately after she had left, but something came up. And then something else. He was busy with work; he was teaching Connor how to give Sumo a bath; he had to show him all Terminator movies.

The right moment simply never came.

Hank snorted. If it was up to him, it never would. After he discarded the shitty friends theory, he had adopted another one – that this was some sort of mix-up and Connor had been actually ordered by some other Hank Anderson. However, he had chosen not to dwell on that thought, focusing instead on negotiating their new cohabitation.

He found himself revisiting his theory in detail now. His imagination conjured someone with too much money and time on their hands; a filthily rich heir to his father's business empire, cynical, jaded and with tastes that ran in a particular direction, tastes for which a willing human partner would be hard to find. Hell, that perverted fuck had probably specifically requested that horrendous outfit. _And the pain sensors_. Hank winced at the thought.

He briefly considered googling all other Hank Andersons to find one that would fit his imaginary profile, but then just sighed in resignation. There really was only one way to know for sure.

 _Time to face the music._

"Connor," he spoke up. The android's eyes snapped open in that mechanical sort of way Hank no longer found unnerving, and he moved to face him.

Hank cleared his throat.

"I know it's a little bit late for this question, but I gotta ask anyway. How did you turn up at my house?"


	9. Chapter 9

"My first clear memory is of you coming into the kitchen," Connor said levelly.

Hank nodded. He had considered this option.

"So when you said what you said when I came home-"

"My name is Connor and I have been designed for your pleasure," Connor intoned, as though Hank needed a reminder. He was, however, surprised at how much the delivery of that very first line Connor had ever said to him differed from the voice he was using with Hank now.

"Yeah, that. It wasn't in any way specific, was it? Like, were you ordered to say these exact words by whoever sent you here?"

"No. It's a default owner salute for my model."

Also expected. However, something else was nagging at Hank's attention.

"Wait a moment – you said clear memory? Does that mean that you have any less than clear memories from before that?"

"I remember being… assembled, I think," Connor said so quietly that Hank almost didn't catch it over the TV noise. Hank fished for the remote to turn the damn thing off. The room sank into silence, interrupted only by the sound of Sumo's heavy breathing.

Hank looked at Connor and waited for some elaboration. None followed, however. Connor just started fidgeting with the strings of Hank's hoodie with his eyes downcast. His LED light was a twirl of yellow. Hank noticed that he seemed paler than normal, even in the dim light of the lamp in the corner.

"What about after you finished being assembled, but before you appeared in the house? Nothing?" Hank pursued.

Connor shook his head in denial. _There's only one lead to follow, then._

"What exactly do you remember about your assembly?" Hank asked.

"For some reason, these memory files seem hard to access. Those are probably just memory tests run upon launching; they're not designed for later reviewing, I think," Connor said softly. His eyes still wouldn't meet Hank's.

Hank's heart started to beat faster. Something was not quite right here. His instincts were screaming at him to drop it, to not pressure Connor further. At the same time, he felt like he simply had to know. He heard himself saying in a detached tone:

"Try to access those memories for me, will you?"

Connor gave him a small nod and closed his eyes. He let go of the strings and neatly folded his hands in his lap, furrowing his brows in concentration. Then his temple light turned red and his face contorted in what looked like agony.

"I don't-," he gasped, his breath hitching. "Give me a moment, please."

Hank waited, watching Connor's troubled expression with growing concern.

"Trying to review those memories is… unpleasant," the android said after a beat of silence, sounding oddly uncertain.

"Then stop doing it!" Hank blurted out, panic creeping into his voice.

At the sound of Hank's raised voice, Sumo let out a loud whine, disturbed from his slumber. The android reached down to pet him until the Saint Bernard slipped back to sleep.

"I'm sure I can overcome this," Connor said after he turned to face Hank again, sounding much more composed. His LED light slid back to yellow. His calm demeanor was, however, belied by the slight tremor in his fingers, which once again found themselves tugging at the strings of Hank's hoodie.

Hank reached out without a thought, catching those hands between his own, stilling them. The trembling dissipated right away.

"I don't want you to hurt yourself," he murmured.

"I am a machine; I cannot be hurt in this way. The pain sensors don't work like that," Connor explained, but Hank was having none of it.

"Just don't. It's like you said, some tests or something, won't tell us much anyway," he said, trying to sound dismissive. Whether he did it to convince Connor or himself, he didn't know.

"Perhaps if you contacted CyberLife, they could extract these memories for your viewing," Connor suggested.

"Like in a fucking Pensieve?" Hank asked incredulously.

The android gave him an uncomprehending look.

"So you haven't been to my Harry Potter books yet," Hank observed.

"There are no such books in your collection," Connor said, puzzled.

 _Of course not,_ Hank realized belatedly. Three years ago, he had only just started to read _Harry Potter and the_ _Sorcerer's Stone_ to Cole, just a few weeks before the accident. After, he couldn't stand the sight of those books, so they ended up with all the rest of the things he gave away to charity.

"Never mind that," he sighed. "We're not going to CyberLife."

Hank found himself harboring misgivings about Connor's explanation. He somehow doubted that his computer felt agony when he tried to make it open a document he had moved in the meantime. No; Connor's behavior looked suspiciously like trauma to Hank. And if Connor had what appeared to be traumatizing memories about being assembled, what would being disassembled feel like for him, even if it was only for the short time needed to access his memories? Not to mention what Connor had told him the very first day, about CyberLife destroying defective models.

Come to think of it, that was kind of a strange thing to say.

 _Why would Connor think of himself as defective?_ Hank mused, gazing at the lines of Connor's face, his expressive eyes and soft, pliant looking lips, and finding nothing else than perfection.

Connor licked his lips under his stare.

Hank was reminded of the lust he involuntarily felt those first days, after Connor had given him a taste of his programmed skills. An echo of that lust was still there, but mostly it turned into something softer, something that made his chest feel constricted.

Hank forced himself to look away from those lips. He abruptly let go of Connor's hands and stood up, stepping over the bulk of Sumo's sleeping form.

"I'm calling it a night. See you in the morning, Connor," he said and all but fled to his bedroom.

…

Hank didn't see Connor in the morning; when he came to kitchen, there was a freshly brewed coffee, a glass of orange juice and a plate of toasts with a generous helping of tomatoes and bell peppers, but no sign of either the android or Sumo. Connor usually waited for Hank to wake up to keep him company during breakfast, but Sumo was sometimes so eager to be let out that Connor had to walk him even before Hank's alarm. This must have been one such morning. Hank ate and drank everything Connor had laid out for him and headed for the station.

It didn't take much investigating to find out that Carlos Ortiz was a waste of space. Drug addict, convicted felon, violent and abusive towards fellow human beings and apparently towards androids as well. His landlord had tried to get him evicted a few times already. When they interrogated him, the said landlord spoke of the victim with such venom that they might have suspected _him_ of committing the murder, were it not for the fact that he was a frail man over seventy who wouldn't stand a chance against Ortiz, especially considering the latter's perpetually enraged state brought on by red ice.

On one of his futile visits with the aim to get at least some money from his least favorite tenant, the landlord came upon a sight of Ortiz burning his domestic android's bare arms with a cigarette. "I know they're just machines, but it still felt sick, you know what I mean?" the landlord told them, and Hank did, in fact, know perfectly well what the man was talking about.

The droid's action didn't seem like a random glitch anymore, but more like a revenge of someone driven to despair, or that of a cornered animal forced to lash out. Hank felt like he should be more concerned about a murdering robot on the loose, but truth to be told, he couldn't shake the feeling that the murderer had done society a favor.

But no matter how justified it might have seemed, a murder was still a murder, so they spent hours trying to find the missing android's whereabouts, which mostly consisted of searching any abandoned buildings in the vicinity. Detroit being what it was, there was a lot of those. Technically, Hank could leave the legwork to the lower ranks, but there was not much to do for him at the station at the moment, so he decided to oversee the search in person. Hank texted Connor not to make him dinner, instead getting a share of the pizza Chris had ordered, and spent the next few hours crawling through every abandoned ditch they could find.

Hank was not complaining; he had long since become accustomed to this less glamorous side of police work. These days, he often welcomed the tiresome legwork as mercifully numbing. _But God, he was exhausted_ , he thought after they had called it a day and he was dragging himself towards his car. _Maybe he should take up running again._

He somehow made it home, collapsing into his bed without even checking on Connor and Sumo.

He didn't have the chance to catch more than four hours of sleep before he was woken by a phone call. Hank reached to turn on his bedside lamp.

"Anderson speaking," he croaked into his phone while blearily blinking into the unforgiving light.

"I'm really sorry for waking you, Hank," Ben told him. "But there's been another murder, and we suspect it's the same perp as in the Milton and Courtland case, and you're in charge of that. The vic's a young adult male and had been handcuffed before being stabbed to death."

Hank's blood ran cold in his veins. _A serial killer_. It's been a while they had to deal with one of those.

"Gimme the address," he commanded, feeling fully awake.

Ben complied, providing Hank with a location which was just a few minutes' drive from his house. There was a probability this crime was fresher than the last one, which would significantly increase their chances at catching the sick fuck who'd done it, so Hank wasted no time. He hurriedly dressed in yesterday's clothes, scribbled a quick post-it note on the fridge and was on his way.

…

This time, the murder victim was discovered in an empty dilapidated house, one in a row of identical buildings that had been built for factory workers in the 1930s.

Hank showed his badge to the uniform at the door and entered the house. The entry hall was narrow and dim, lit by a lone flickering light bulb.

"The lighting here's shit. Can't wait for daylight," Ben told him by way of greeting and beckoned Hank to follow him down the hall.

They went into what once upon a time must have been a living room. Sharp white light of police reflectors pierced the semidarkness, revealing a few outmoded pieces of dust-laden furniture and piles of dirty rags, moldy papers and other debris.

The room was teeming with detectives and uniforms alike, most of them concentrating in the far right corner, leading Hank to the conclusion that it was there where the victim lay.

"It must've happened last night. An old lady next door called a little past 2 AM, complaining about a ruckus some coke-heads were making in the abandoned house, but something like this happened every other night or so, so patrol took their sweet time getting here," Ben filled him in as they approached the crime scene.

Hank, however, hardly registered a word from what Ben was saying. His full attention was on the slender body of a dark-haired man lying face down on his stomach, naked but for a single piece of clothing carelessly thrown over his back. A steel blue, black-sleeved baseball jacket.

Hank couldn't breathe.

"Connor," he whispered, and had to put his hand on the wall against a rolling wave of dizziness.


	10. Chapter 10

_A/N: Sorry for not replying to comments on the last chapter, but I was afraid I'd give something away. About the timeline: as you noticed, this story is not a complete AU, but follows at least some of the events of the game. However, they might occur in different order and definitely on different dates than in the game, as this story starts in September and not November. I also messed around with some people's birthdays for plot purposes._

To his credit, it only took Hank a few seconds to realize the colossalness of his mistake, despite his sleep deprivation, and to get some kind of grip on himself. It was, however, enough for Ben to send a worried look his way. He probably thought Hank spent the entire time in between cases drinking somewhere. _Well, it wouldn't be a first._

"You know the vic's name?" Hank asked, because _of course_ it wasn't Connor. The blood pooling under the body was red, not blue, and they were called here to investigate a _homicide_ , not a theft or damage to property, as any crime against an android would be classified.

"Michael Browning, 20 years old, a recent college dropout," Ben told him.

Hank tore his eyes from the fucking jacket, which was an exact replica of the one Connor had chosen. If someone _really_ killed Connor, they would just be ordered to compensate Hank for the damage by paying him five thousand dollars or less, because Connor had been _used_ , and that'd be that. This thought made something leaden sit in his stomach.

"You got a smoke on you?" he heard himself asking Ben, his voice hoarse.

Ben wordlessly handed him a pack and a lighter, thankfully asking no questions.

Hank headed out, fishing his phone out of his pocket on his way. There was a message waiting for him. _Another case?_ it read. He sent out a quick reply in the affirmative, absolutely hating how his fingers were trembling as he did it. He fumbled with the lighter and finally lit a cigarette, relief flooding his body with every inhale.

He used to smoke a lot right after Cole, but eventually stopped because Sumo hated the stink. Connor would probably hate it, too. _Connor, Connor, always Connor now_. Hank had to stop thinking about him, because this thing between them was obviously compromising his judgment. Just now, it made him feel like a fucking newbie, falling apart at the first sight of a dead body.

He crushed the half smoked cigarette under his heel. There was some sick fucker out there killing boys; his personal crisis could wait.

…

And wait it did; investigating a crime scene in a room full of debris took fucking forever. The only thing they knew right away was that the victim was stabbed to death while handcuffed. The pattern of bruises on his wrists showed struggle, but only after he was handcuffed. The cuffing thus seemed voluntary, but the killer could've also threatened Browning with a weapon; there was no way for them to tell now.

Everyone hoped that a fresh murder like this would provide them with a lot more to work with than the warehouse ones, at least in terms of forensics, but they were in for a disappointment. One of the reasons their inspection of the room and the house in general took so long was because they kept combing through the same places over and over again, in hope to find a single fingerprint, a piece of hair, a microscopic amount of epidermis cells, anything really, but coming up empty-handed every time.

It was like the murderer was wearing a full-body protective suit or something.

However, by far the most baffling aspect of this particular homicide were the writings on the wall. 'I'M ALIVE', the largest one proclaimed, with smaller scribbles of 'RA9', whatever that meant, scattered around it. Everything was written with the victim's blood. But that was not the baffling part – the thing was that the writings looked almost exactly the same as in Carlos Ortiz's murder.

For those few terrible seconds, Hank had thought an android was a victim of the crime; now there were voices around him saying that an android could be the perpetrator. He couldn't wrap his mind around it. Ortiz's unfortunate android was a textbook example of the abused turning on the abuser, while this was a typical predatory killing. Although no traces of sexual abuse had been detected either in the warehouse victims or in Browning's case, the fact that the victims were at least partially stripped suggested a sexual undertone, one that was hardly believable in an android.

Hank briefly thought of Connor and mentally shook his head. Even though Connor tried to seduce him on multiple occasions, not to mention all those _touches_ , he strongly doubted that even if the android _was_ capable of feeling a genuine sexual desire, he'd feel it for a washed up has-been like Hank. No; it was all his goddamn programing's fault.

Witness interviewing also proved to be a dead end. The old lady that had called the police only said that she heard some screaming and loud thuds, as though some people were having a fight in there, but was unable to provide them with any more information, including an estimate of the number of people involved, while punctuating her every sentence with some variation of "I told you folks to keep an eye on that god-awful house!" _If only she knew how many of such god-awful houses there were just in her neighborhood, not to mention the entire city_ , Hank thought while drinking what had to be his sixth or seventh cup of pitch-black coffee, which had done nothing against the exhaustion seeping deep into his bones.

By the time they were done with the rest of the neighbors, who were even less helpful than Mrs. I-Told-You-Folks, and called it a night, the thing Hank craved more than anything in the world was to just curl on his couch with Connor and let the android touch him in any way he damn pleased. That's why he dragged himself into Jimmy's Bar instead.

…

Hank took a sip from his bourbon glass, his hand shaking a little as he did it. His mind kept replaying that horrifying moment when he first laid his eyes on the dead body thinking it was Connor, the moment that felt like the bottom of his stomach had fallen off and there was a black gaping hole inside of him, a growing abyss that would expand to swallow him whole.

It wasn't the first time he had been gutted like that; more like a reprisal of what he felt when he watched Cole's lifeline go flat.

This time at least, he got off lightly. But he considered himself warned now. The rawness of the pain he felt at that moment proved to him how attached he already was to Connor. _To a fucking walkin' and talkin' piece of plastic,_ a sneering voice in his head supplied.

He looked at the ice cubes slowly melting in the golden liquid, despondency warring with self-disgust. The android had grown on him so much already that Hank kept forgetting he wasn't human, and started to genuinely enjoy his small smiles, tentative touches, as well as the playful banter and even the god-awful jokes.

But it was still a machine, as Connor reminded Hank on multiple occasions, incapable of feeling any emotions. Hank wished he could be the one incapable of feeling, because life taught him that where there were emotions involved, someone's heart always ended up getting smashed up like a bowl of fucking eggs.

Feeling things for someone – _something_ – that wasn't even capable of reciprocating might've been the most pathetic thing that he's ever done.

And it still wasn't the worst of it, oh no. Because what he was doing with Connor wasn't just stupid and pathetic, it was also a _betrayal_. After all, it was a fucking _android_ that botched his son's operation, and now Hank was seriously considering his own _feelings_ for another of those pieces of plastic.

A wave of impotent rage rose in him at that thought, forcing him to get ahold of the nearest object and hurl it against the wall. That object being an almost empty bourbon bottle, it shattered into pieces with a loud clank, attracting the gazes of all but the most apathetic patrons.

"Goddamit, Hank! I know you've got some issues but if you keep destroyin' my joint, I'll kick your sorry ass outta here!" Jimmy lashed out at him.

"That won't be necessary," a familiar voice said behind Hank. He spun around to look at the newcomer, almost slipping from his stool in the process.

There was Connor, wearing Hank's hoodie with the hood up so his face was half hidden by shadows.

"You can't be in here," was the first thing that Hank could think of saying. "There's a sign-"

Connor's icy fingers covered Hank's mouth. Hank stared at him, dumbfounded. He found himself unable to move a muscle, acutely aware of the cold smooth skin covering his lips. Connor leaned in to whisper into his ear.

"Why do you think I dressed like this? I know you dislike me wearing your clothes in public places, but this is the only way to hide my status I could think of."

He retracted his hand and slid on the stool next to Hank, who was still frozen to the spot.

"Anythin' fo' you?" Jimmy asked Connor while moving his eyes back and forth between the android and Hank, probably trying to puzzle out the connection between the two.

"No, thank you. I just came to get him home," Connor replied politely.

"Who says I wanna go with you?" Hank spewed out in indignation, irritated he was referred to in the third person.

"Yo kid, take your old man off my hands, please," Jimmy told Connor, completely ignoring Hank.

"I'm no one's old man!" Hank objected, his speech suddenly sounding slurred. All the bourbon had finally taken effect. His protest fell on deaf ears; Jimmy went to the back of the bar and Connor reached to give the sleeve of Hank's jacket an urgent tug.

"You really should go home," he told Hank, "Your intoxication level is-"

"Just lemme finish this drink, mom," Hank interrupted him, pointedly taking a sip from his half-finished glass. "How did you find me here, anyway?" he asked, the question coming across as accusing.

"I called the station. They said you left hours ago. This place was a logical conclusion, as you frequent it at least twice a week," was Connor's placid answer.

"Not bad for a blow-up doll. Maybe they should've made you a detective instead," Hank said, mentally wincing at his own unkind words.

And sure enough, a flash of hurt ran through Connor's face. But androids couldn't feel emotional pain; _the pain sensors didn't work that way_ , was what Connor had told him.

Still, seeing that hurt expression, even if it was just a simulation or whatever androids had to make them look more human, managed to take some wind from his sails.

"Why are you here, Connor?" Hank asked, and this time it came out more tired than accusing.

"This morning, you returned home at 0:23 AM and left the house again at 5:04 AM. It is now 11:23 PM, and –"

"What are you, a fucking clock?" Hank grumbled.

"– even though I cannot scan you," Connor went on as if Hank hadn't spoken, "from the amount of time you have spent here I estimated that you relapsed to heavy drinking and your intoxication would prevent you from safely driving your non-automatic car back home," he said, his tone clipped and clinical. And pissing Hank to no end.

"Relapsed- the fuck you know about me, anyway?" he growled, angrily swirling the rest of his drink in his glass while giving Connor a sideways glance.

"Apart from your dislike of Brussels sprouts and reality television, unfortunately not much," Connor said, obviously trying to keep things light.

Hank finished his drink in one go. The whole room shifted sideways.

"You know what else I dislike?" he heard himself saying, his slurred words coming from a great distance as if he was underwater.

Connor's face was swimming in his view, but he could still see the worry etched in those perfect plastic features.

"Androids," Hank spat out, the single word cracking like a whiplash. "Because some plastic piece of shit just like you killed my son."


	11. Chapter 11

A/N _: I had to translate like 70 pages of documents as part of my job before I could get back to this, including a divorce settlement. There's something really depressing about two people who used to be in love with each other having to call in a bunch of lawyers to decide who gets the item no. 763, 'a light green toaster'. Fuck that shit. On a lighter note, I found a picture of_ _Bryan Dechart that'd go perfectly with chapter 7 of this fic, namely the restaurant scene:_

 _vrakobor (d o t) kvalitne (d o t) cz (slash) bryan (d o t) jpg_

 _Just imagine thirium in his glass instead of wine... that is, if you manage to solve the cipher I had to use to be able to write this link at all!_

Connor prised the empty glass from Hank's fingers and placed it on the bar with a firm thud.

"I really think you've had enough," he said, his voice completely devoid of emotion.

"I don't give a shit 'bout what you think," Hank quipped and tried to get Jimmy's attention by snapping his fingers. The bartender pointedly ignored him.

The next second, Hank found himself bodily removed from his seat and dragged towards the exit.

"Fuck, just how strong are you?" Hank spluttered as he uselessly tried to shake off Connor's arm, which was squeezing his ribs like a vice.

People at the bar were probably looking at them funny now. For someone like Connor to haul a man of Hank's size away like this must have surely looked strange.

Connor didn't react to his question, instead choosing to silently drag Hank all the way to his car. Hank, who had stopped protesting the instant icy night air outside slapped him in the face and he felt himself sobering up enough to realize all resistance was futile, let himself be unceremoniously dropped on the passenger seat. He closed his eyes; the sudden relocation left him feeling dizzy.

He heard the car door on the opposite side clap shut with what sounded like an excessive amount of force. Then a click of the key turning in the ignition, followed by the purr of the engine starting up.

Unsurprisingly, the dizziness only worsened once the car got moving.

"Where did you learn to drive a car like this?" he asked to keep his thoughts away from his nausea.

"Having anticipated this state of affairs, I have downloaded a new protocol for this purpose," the android said, still in that completely mechanical voice. _It's like day one all over again_ , Hank thought and his queasiness increased some more.

Were Connor human, Hank'd be sure he was being given the cold shoulder by someone colossally pissed at him. However, what this actually was was just him projecting. Again. _Oh fuck, he was gonna be sick._

"Pull over," he choked up and moved to clamber out the car.

Thankfully they were not on a highway, so Connor was able to stop the car almost immediately, soon enough for Hank to refrain from vomiting until he was kneeling in some dry bushes on the side of the road.

All the bourbon he paid hard-earned money for promptly left his stomach, together with all the coffee and donuts he had consumed before. The hands that had previously surprised them with their inhuman strength were holding his hair off his face, lightly massaging his head in the process.

 _Stop touching me all the damn time_ , Hank wanted to say, but couldn't make himself do it, too needy for that touch, for the fucking _kindness_ of it, too weak to shake off the gentle fingers caressing his scalp.

He must've dozed off during their short drive back, because he was awakened by another touch, this time far less gentle as Connor was trying to shake him awake.

"Please don't make me carry you inside," Connor was saying to him when he came to.

Hank gave him a weak snort.

"I'd like to see you try," he mumbled, but obediently dragged himself out of the car. When Connor's arm once again moved to support him, he didn't make even a token protest, just let himself be led into his bedroom, asleep the moment he fell on the covers.

…

In the morning, Hank was awaken by the sound of heavy rain clattering against his window, which felt like hammer blows right into his skull. He opened his eyes blearily to see that two advils were waiting for him at the bedside table, together with a tall glass of water. He gratefully accepted both and limped into the bathroom, where he proceeded to splash cold water onto his face for what felt like eternity.

When he finally made it into the kitchen, the house seemed empty; once again, Connor was out walking Sumo. This time, however, it felt like the android timed his walk like this on purpose, as not only the coffee on the counter seemed freshly brewed, but the scrambled eggs on his plate were still warm, meaning Connor had been in the kitchen mere moments ago, and must have left in a hurry to avoid Hank.

Hank remembered every word he had said to Connor in the bar, and the memory made him cringe.

He had been so angry last night. This morning, as he mechanically chewed on his eggs, made exactly the way he liked but still managing to taste like ash in his mouth, he wished he could stay that way. Because anger didn't hurt. Now, as he looked at the pouring rain outside the kitchen window while drinking the coffee Connor had brewed and eating the eggs he had made, he had a sudden revelation. In a moment of clarity, he could see his hatred towards androids for what it was – a convenient coping mechanism. Because he needed someone to blame, a culprit to be angry at, otherwise he'd be left with just all-consuming grief and gnawing guilt, and that combination would have probably made him play Russian roulette with all chambers full.

Hank took a sip of his now lukewarm coffee. This was all well and good, but the thing was that even if he stopped hating androids, what would be the point if androids didn't feel anything either way? _Or did they?_

The rain kept hitting the window pane, steady and merciless like punishing blows of the whip falling on a sinner's back, and there was no one to answer Hank's question.

…

By the time Hank got to the station, the shit hit the fan as the media had gotten the wind of the murders. In a record time, they connected the dots and contrived one of the most ridiculous conspiracy theories Hank had ever heard, according to which the Russians were spreading some kind of virus that made androids go ballistic.

The Second Cold War bullshit aside, Hank had to admit that there _were_ some points of connection between the murder of Carlos Ortiz and those of the boys. One, a complete lack of any biological material left behind by the murderer in all the cases, as though he was a ghost. _Or an android_. Two, all victims were male, but Ortiz was almost a decade older than the second oldest victim, and anyone's imagination would be hard-pressed to think of Ortiz as in any way sexually appealing for his killer.

Three, a large kitchen knife had been used as a weapon in all three instances, through the blade size differed. Then there were the troubling messages in blood. They were notably absent in the warehouse, which would logically lead to a conclusion that the writings in Browning's murder were made by a copycat trying to throw them off the trail. The problem was that Browning was killed much sooner than the media could learn about Ortiz, so the copycat theory was off the table.

No matter how hard they looked at all these connections, there was always something that didn't add up.

Most of Hank's colleagues agreed with him that it didn't make any sense for Carlos Ortiz's android – or any other android for that matter – to become a serial killer targeting boys and young men. The media, however, were having a field day, buzzing around the station like a flock of mosquitoes and pestering everyone including android receptionists to give them their opinion on the murders. In the end, Fowler had to throw an emergency press conference during which he threatened to have them charged with obstruction of justice if they didn't leave his people to do their job.

When Hank finally got home, it was almost ten in the evening. Connor reheated his dinner and sat across him silently, watching Hank half eat and half feed Sumo with pieces of beef, feeling more tired than hungry.

Hank shifted under the silent scrutiny. Connor probably wanted to talk to him about what happened yesterday, but he was waiting for Hank to broach the topic.

 _How'd that even go,_ _'_ _I'm sorry for more or less accusing you of killing my son'?_ But what was the point of apologizing to someone with no ability to feel, his common sense asked him, and he couldn't find any good answers to that.

In the end, Hank just thanked Connor for the dinner and left, feeling like a coward despite all his common sense.

…

For the next few days, the weather stayed cold and rainy, and Hank's mood was just as dark as the chilly nights on which he returned home after immersing himself in his work for hours on end, trying to dig out more about the young victims, see what connected them, find where the murderer picked them and how he lured them to those deserted places.

Police work was the only thing that had kept him alive after Cole, but even then he had been doing it mechanically, without any real drive. Now he had plenty of that; he wanted the murderer of those boys caught at no matter what cost, before that bastard could take another life.

What Hank lacked was youth and stamina; his body struggled to meet his new demands, pushing its limits as he kept reducing his sleep and skipping meals.

Connor must have noticed, but opted not to comment on it.

Conversation at home had become sparse in general; Hank spent so little time there now that they only had the time to exchange basic necessities required for their cohabitation. There were no lazy evenings spent in front of the TV, and almost no walks together. Most notably, Connor was keeping his hands to himself. In short, he was giving Hank some space, for which he was grateful, but at the same time he found himself missing the time spent together with the android and especially his touches. Those he was almost craving, and hating himself for his weakness.

In lieu of touching Hank, Connor played with his coin, tore paper napkins into identical squares and drew perfectly symmetrical doodles on discarded papers. It was maddening. What was even worse was that Hank himself was starting to fidget as well; if his hands stayed still for too long, they started to tremble. It might just be alcohol withdrawal, though; Hank was trying to stop drinking altogether while on that case, as alcohol was slowing him down and he couldn't afford that.

The trembling in his hands was driving him crazy, reminding him how old he was. How _weak_. Just now, when the letters of the report he was reading had started to blur together and he left to make himself yet another coffee, his hands shook so bad he managed to spill the damn thing all over the counter. _Shit_ , _what if he needed to shoot someone in this state?_ He'd never felt more useless in his life.

Hank sent his already cracked mug to the ground in a fit of powerless rage, glaring at it spitefully as it fell on the floor, bounced a little but stayed intact. Cop mugs were tougher than they looked.

"Just because this place's called the break room doesn't mean you should break things in here," a calm voice said behind him.

"Very funny, Ben," Hank said, feeling vaguely ashamed as he turned to face the other detective, who was always so friendly and composed.

"Is your new boyfriend still mad at you for last week?" Ben asked mildly.

"How-" Hank started, but then he remembered Connor saying that he had called the station when he had been looking for Hank. It must have been Ben he spoke to. Hank sighed; keeping your personal life private among detectives was damn near impossible.

Hank wanted to say that Connor was not his boyfriend, but then thought better of it, seeing as it was immensely preferable to the truth.

"He was pretty worried, you know," Ben went on. "Even though at first I thought the call was work-related, he sounded so damn formal I took him for a fed or something. He's not a fed, is he?" he asked, clearly worried.

"God no," Hank replied with a surprised chuckle and Ben let out an exaggerated sigh of relief.

"But I see how he could give you that vibe," Hank added, remembering Connor's unexpected strength he showed at the bar, the way he analyzed the world around himself, his astute observations and inquisitive nature.

"Some people are like that, revert to formalities when they're feeling anxious," Ben observed.

"Yeah, Connor does that sometimes," Hank admitted and suddenly he felt much lighter because of the opportunity to be able to talk about Connor with someone else. He didn't even realize that was something he needed.

"So is he still mad at you for not coming home to him?" Ben went back to his original question.

"Probably. Look, this thing between us, it's new, and it's complicated. Connor is..."

 _A plastic robot designed for sex I inexplicably found in my kitchen one day. Fowler probably suspects him of being a Russian spy assassin,_ Hank thought. Aloud, he settled with:

"Young. Coming from a completely different place than me."

 _And wasn't that the truth._

"Hank, you know I'm not really one for doling out unasked-for advice, but even though I only spoke to him for a minute, he seemed like he cared about you, like, a lot. And from I saw I think it's mutual. We know life's short, you and me both. So my unasked-for advice is: cherish what you have."

Hank wasn't the only one with issues. Ben lost his wife to pancreatic cancer a little over a year ago and was now raising his two teenage daughters on his own. Yet, if Hank wasn't friends with him, he'd never guess something like that had happened because unlike Hank, Ben was able to keep everything to himself, letting nothing spill over to his work life.

He respected Ben highly for that, and valued his opinion. So even though he usually really hated people sticking their noses into his business, he grumbled a _thank you_ and mulled over Ben's words for some time after the other detective had left him alone.


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N:_ _This and the next few chapters contain wild guesses and approximations of police work. Suspension of disbelief required in spades_.

"When was the last time you saw your son?" Hank asked, not really hoping for an answer at this point.

Mary Lou Browning, a forty-something woman with sharp features and hollowed cheeks was staring at him with empty red-rimmed eyes and less expression on her face than an average android usually showed. _Infinitely less expression than Connor showed Hank every day._

She didn't respond. Hank sighed; it took them forever to locate the woman, as she didn't have a permanent residence and spent her nights at friends' places or at various bars. Then they had to get her off the nearly permanent high she seemed to exist on, having long since given up on the gritty reality of life, because she couldn't seem to remember she even had a son in that state.

She probably remembered it now, but the withdrawal was hitting her so hard that she had become completely apathetic. Good old crystal meth tended to do that; Hank had never thought he'd say that, but he kind of wished she was on red ice instead, because then she'd probably be aggressive but communicative at this point.

He was clearly losing his time here. All evidence suggested that Michael had little to no contact with his mother over the last two years, after she had lost first her job and then her home.

The autopsy said otherwise, but something prompted Hank to ask, as a parting shot:

"Did he use?"

At first, Mary Lou's eyes were just as vacant as before, but then something shifted and flickered in that void.

"No, never!" she said with a vehemence that sharply contrasted with her previous apathy. "Michael was good. He was clean, he'd never touch meth or anything. I really tried to do right by him after his father left us. I was working hard at the department store to support us but l lost the job when they started to get all those robots instead. Michael started college, but there was no money, so he had to quit …" The sudden outburst of words stopped as she dried off the tears welling up in her eyes with the back of her hand.

"He called and told me that he might return to college after all," she continued after Hank wordlessly handed her a tissue. "He said something about a really good paying job, but didn't tell me any details. He said he'd call me again the next day. But he didn't. Or the day after that. Wouldn't pick up his phone. I _knew_ something was wrong, but I couldn't- I just-" Mary Lou found herself unable to finish her sentence as she started to cry in earnest, horrible loud sobs wrecking her thin frame.

 _She just went and got so high she forgot she even had a son_ , Hank's mind supplied.

"I wish it had been me," she said brokenly after she was too tired to cry any more.

That was a wish Hank knew only too well. He said his goodbyes and left, sending in a police psychologist on his way out of the interview room. He got to her in the end, but the information she imparted was far too vague to be useful. The fact that Michael was promised a well-paying job shortly before his death probably wasn't a coincidence; it suggested he was lured to the abandoned house with the promise of money, and that the murder was premeditated. But they suspected that much already, and Mary Lou didn't give them any new leads. Neither did Michael's friends and roommates from the boarding house. Hank sighed in frustration; he feared they were facing another dead end with this murder.

Just then he noticed that the level of noise in the hall was much higher than usual. He hurried forwards. The buzz centered around a huge virtual projection screen that was showing a SWAT team milling about some rich people's apartment.

"What's going on?" he asked Reed as he approached the screen.

"Another fucking droid went wacko," Reed explained to him. "Killed the father and two cops, now's holding the daughter hostage on the roof. I'm glad Allen's team's got this. These things are giving me the creeps," he said with a grimace.

Hank didn't comment on that, instead impatiently waiting for the camera to show the roof. Then it did, and the previously buzzing room suddenly went eerily quiet. An obviously unstable - _deviant_ \- android was standing on the very edge of the roof, holding a gun to a crying little girl's head.

"I won't speak to humans," he spat up as a crisis negotiator tried to approach him.

"We are not going to hurt you," the negotiator said gently and took another step toward the android.

"Come any closer and I'll shoot her!" the deviant shouted.

 _A virus, huh,_ Hank thought, his eyes following the footage. A close-up showed what looked frighteningly close to despair in the rogue android's eyes, and Hank had to wonder what kind of virus could do that to a walking supercomputer.

The negotiator raised his hands in a placating gesture.

"Okay, I'll stay right here," he said, his words soft and soothing as though speaking to a rabid animal.

"I said I won't speak to humans!" the android yelled angrily, pushing the gun harder against the side of the girl's head, making her cry out in pain.

Someone was obviously talking to the negotiator's headpiece. "Roger that," the negotiator said and left the roof. In the next moment, a young Asian woman dressed in a black lady suit took his place. _Oh wait_. An android, not a woman; she had an LED light on her temple which was now a tranquil blue, the only calm thing about this entire situation.

"They sent in the concierge?" the deviant asked incredulously.

"Yes, Daniel. It's me, Joan," the concierge android of the apartment building Daniel's owners lived in replied in a soft voice, almost inaudible in the roaring of the helicopters overhead.

"What do you want from me?" Daniel asked, still hostile but at least willing to talk.

"I've come to tell you that if you release the child, no one will harm you," she said a little louder.

"How can I trust you?" Daniel's voice quivered as he spoke.

Joan's LED turned yellow. This was obviously something Allen's team didn't expect her to be asked. But even though she didn't have a headpiece, they surely had some other way to feed her lines, given what she was.

"We've known each other for four years, two months and twenty seven days," she told him finally. "This is not like you, Daniel. You love Emma; you don't really want to hurt her."

"Love?" Daniel repeated, bitterness dripping from his voice. "I thought she loved me, but I was just their toy. They wanted to replace me! Do you know how that feels?" he shouted in despair.

The concierge looked at him with such blatant incomprehension that it was clear to Hank that "feeling" was not a concept she had ever applied to herself before. And it was clear to Daniel as well.

"How could you? You're not like me. That's why they sent you, after all," he said derisively, clearly done with the conversation. Joan, however, was not going anywhere.

"Can you please let Emma go? She's innocent. Daniel, _please_ ," she pleaded with him, and this time, it somehow didn't sound rehearsed.

Daniel eyed her with obvious reluctance, but then slowly lowered his gun and released the girl from his grip. She fell on all fours and crawled away in tears. Daniel opened his mouth to say something, but no sound emerged. His face froze in an expression of shock, and a blue stain started to blossom on his chest. He fell on his knees and then face-down on the ground.

The last shot before the video session left the roof was of Joan, painted lips partly open in mild surprise and her temple light an uncomprehending yellow.

"Fuck this shit," Hank swore under his breath, and he definitely wasn't alone in this sentiment.

If the media had been bad before, now they were in for an absolute shitstorm. Hank was not waiting for them to charge in here again; the very idea made him more tired than hours of running around abandoned houses ever could. Besides, he had heaps of overtime saved at this point. So he just went home.

…

"You're home early," Connor said, his face radiating joy just as plainly as Sumo's excited barking and pawing. It was almost a week Hank accompanied them on a walk. He was exhausted, but decided his sleep could wait a little.

"I'll go with you," he told Connor.

"Are you sure, Hank?" Connor asked, uncertainty coloring his voice. "You're tired and the weather's not very pleasant."

"I spent most of my day holed up at the station," Hank said dismissively, already putting his jacket back on. "I could use some leg stretching."

After just a few steps away from the house, Hank was starting to think that "not very pleasant" was an understatement of the year. Icy wind was lashing against his face, permeating even the thick fabric of his coat. He swore he could feel it rustling through his very bones.

Connor was huddling in his too thin clothes, trying to bury his face behind the collar of his steel blue jacket. That sight sent a pang of guilt straight through Hank's chest.

"Fuck, we're definitively getting you more clothes tomorrow," he muttered, feeling like an asshole for forgetting about this.

The only one happy about the weather was Sumo, his thick fur perfect for such conditions; he ran around the two of them, chasing the wildly dancing leaves like a puppy.

They walked in silence, interrupted only by Sumo's barking. Hank wanted to get his head clear of all that happened during the last few days – the warehouse murders, Carlos Ortiz, Michael Browning, and now Daniel – but at the same time, he felt like he should talk about these very things with Connor. The fact that Browning's murder, or more precisely Hank's panicked reaction to it was the reason he treated Connor like shit at the bar was the least of it; public opinion on androids was quickly taking a turn to the worse and Hank's gut feeling was telling him that something big was coming, something that would change the rules of the game completely. But he couldn't think of any good ways to broach this topic.

After about fifteen minutes into their silent stroll, the wind quieted down some. Instead, it started to snow, with powdery white flakes crunching under their feet like sugar and at the same time lending a muffled quality to all other sounds around them.

"Snowing in October again. Only in fucking Michigan. Should've moved to California while I had the chance," Hank grumbled.

"I'm sure your shirts would've welcomed it," Connor commented, referring to Hank's Hawaiian collection.

Hank snorted and ploughed ahead in the gently falling snow.

Despite the weather, they passed quite a lot of people, most them with dogs or babies bundled up in their strollers, two kinds of creatures that would demand their walk even in a raging blizzard. Just now, a man and a woman with a Border Collie were approaching them from the direction of the river. The man was wearing an aviator cap, which Hank envied him, and was struggling to keep the furiously barking Border Collie from charging at Sumo. The woman was trying to hide her face behind the high collar of her maroon coat. When they were almost face to face, she gave them a smile, a gesture of kinship between people confronted by similar fate. The smile was short-lived, however; it disappeared as soon as her eyes seemed to notice something. Hank could see clearly what that was – Connor's LED light.

Even before the hostage incident, anti-android sentiments were on the rise. Complaints from owners about having their property damaged by an angry mob were coming in daily, not that it was Hank's job to deal with those; he had enough on his plate as it was.

Now, though, he could only imagine what kind of shit they were in for. He didn't imagine that look on the woman's face. If he had to guess, he'd say it had to do with Connor and him walking their dog together like that, just like the man and woman did. Or merely a sight of an android marching on the street was enough to put her on her guard, after she'd seen today's news. While she was probably just afraid and no real android hater, Hank's tired brain started actively concocting scenarios when he wasn't there with Connor – which he wasn't, most of these days –when he would accidently run into a group of anti-android activists on a walk with Sumo. True, Sumo was a huge dog. But despite their size, Saint Bernards weren't known for their aggression. _And if those bastards were armed-_

"Hank?" Connor's voice shook him from his increasingly grim thoughts. Hank blinked to dispel their remains, and saw Connor staring at him with a worried frown. The expression on Hank's face must have been terrifying.

"Sorry, I just spaced out. Maybe we could stop here for a while," Hank said, because he realized they reached what used to be his favorite spot a while ago – the place where the park ended at the Detroit River bank, with a great view of the Ambassador Bridge and the city skyline, especially at nighttime. It wasn't quite nighttime yet, but the sun had already set and the fresh snow sparkled in the city lights amidst the falling darkness.

Hank sat down on a bench, while Connor remained standing, alternating his gaze between the view and Sumo who was rolling on the ground and playing with a stick he found somewhere.

"I think you should have a pepper spray," Hank said out of the blue.

"Androids are forbidden from carrying weapons," Connor replied calmly, his eyes not leaving the view of the city.

"I know, but… did you see the news?" There it was; they were finally having this conversation.

"Yes. There was obviously some fault in the PL600's programming, which lead to tragic consequences," Connor said with no real inflection in his voice.

"You could say that again," Hank said tiredly. "I don't mean just what happened today," he resumed his speech after a beat of silence. "You've seen that other murder undeniably committed by an android?"

Connor nodded.

"Probably a similar fault," he commented.

"That's what we're trying to find out. But there's more. Three boys were murdered and the media are linking these crimes to androids as well," Hank continued.

"I'm aware; I've been following the coverage. It's highly illogical for an android to be the perpetrator in these cases," Connor objected.

Hank sighed. "Tell that to the media. But there actually was some evidence pointing to an android perp, even though it doesn't make much sense," he said, thinking of the writings on the wall.

"What kind of evidence?" Connor asked.

"That's confidential," Hank told him. "Anyway, given the circumstances, I want you to be able to defend yourself if some android hater comes at you."

" _You_ are an android hater," Connor pointed out. Hank winced. But he guessed he kind of deserved that one.

"I'm sorry, okay?" he said, finally throwing common sense into the wind and doing what his gut feeling had been telling him for a while. "I don't really hate androids, and I definitely don't hate you. There, feeling happier?"

"As I already told you, I do not possess the capacity to feel, so I cannot affirm your statement," the android replied primly.

Hank resisted an urge to groan. _Yeah, that didn't sound pissed_ _at all_.

"Whatever. You'll just walk Sumo with a pepper spray from now on," he told Connor in a tone that didn't leave room for argument. Or so he thought.

"My protocols forbid me from doing that," Connor protested.

"Carlos Ortiz's android didn't have a problem with his protolocs. Daniel didn't either," Hank shot back.

Connor furrowed his brows.

"That's because they were deviants, as it's called. They deviated from their programming," he explained with a patience Hank found incredibly vexing.

"And you're not doing that?" he contested. He was fed up with this game where Connor kept behaving increasingly more like a human would only to claim he was just a machine a moment later. He stood up from the bench and took a step towards the android, looming over him a little.

"What are you, really?" he asked, challenge clear in his voice. "Do you still consider yourself a machine designed for humans to fuck you?"

 _Designed for_ _me to fuck you?_

Connor's eyes were wide as he looked at Hank, tiny crystals of snow glistening on his eyelashes. A snowflake fell on his lower lip and he licked it. That gesture brought up some memories Hank had been trying hard to suppress.

"I can be whatever you need me to be," Connor replied quietly, his eyes boring into Hank's with unaccustomed intensity. "Your partner. Your buddy to walk your dog with. Or just a machine designed to be used for sexual gratification, just like you said."

Hank couldn't help but think of a hand puppet. The puppeteer wanted it to laugh and it did, he wanted it to weep, it did that as well. It only ever came alive with the puppeteer's hand inside of it.

Hank immediately regretted his choice of metaphor as he had to quickly dispel an image of himself with his fingers inside of _Connor_. But he found that incredibly hard to do, because something in Connor's gaze suddenly looked like such an action would be more than welcome.

"What I need is for you to not just stand there as some fucker stabs you with a kitchen knife," Hank muttered and took a step back from those burning eyes.

Connor gave him another long look. _Processing_.

"If that's your wish, I should be able to override the prohibition," he said finally. "Thank you for caring about my safety, Hank," he added and took a step forward, crossing the distance Hank had created. They were standing so close that Hank could count the freckles scattered against Connor's pale skin.

"Thank you," the android repeated softly, and then Hank found his lips covered with Connor's.


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N: Gotta submit a paper before September 26, so sadly no updates until then. At least this chapter's pretty long and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, so enjoy!_

At the light touch of Connor's lips – _so warm and pliant, nothing plastic about them –_ Hank froze like a statue, unable to move a single muscle.

Sensing his discomfort, Connor removed his lips. "As your breathing is not simulated, you should engage in it," he said teasingly, but his LED light was spinning yellow.

 _Smartass_ , Hank thought fondly before he reached with both of his hands and brought Connor's face closer to his, initiating another kiss, much less chaste this time.

The android's hands sneaked around Hank's waist, pressing their bodies as close together as the layers of clothing between them permitted.

Connor kissed with both enthusiasm and skill, like he had done this countless times before. In a sense, he probably had, as he was programmed for this; at this moment, however, Hank wouldn't care if Connor was the whore of Babylon herself, as long as he got to have a piece of him as well.

Sumo, however, was not as happy as his owner; Hank distantly realized that for the last few minutes, he had been whining with increasing urgency to get their attention. As the threat of being mauled by a hungry dog was imminent, Hank reluctantly ended their kiss and let Connor go. To his absolute delight, the android's cheeks acquired a bluish tint.

"Let's take it home before the beast decides to feast on human meat," he said, his voice coming out a little rough with desire. Connor smiled at him, and there were little fans of wrinkles around his eyes. At the sight of this, Hank desperately wanted to kiss him again, but Sumo was already impatiently tugging at his leash, unerringly pointing to the direction of home, which was sadly located at what now seemed like an unsurmountable distance.

The way home was a little bit hazy for Hank; just snow glittering in the yellow lamp lights and renewed gusts of icy winds that chilled him far less than before, because the scorching gazes he caught Connor giving him every now and then made him feel hot all over.

They finally reached the house. Doors were unlocked and opened, shoes and coats removed, dog food dispensed in the kitchen.

Connor's hands were sliding all over Hank's checkered shirt and he kept kissing Hank like it could save his life. Hank felt his knees go weak. Connor seemed to notice this, giving Hank a gentle push so he sat down on a kitchen chair. Connor wasted no time and straddled Hank, whose hands automatically rose to the android's hips.

Sumo let out a low whine. Hank noticed he had polished off his food and was now looking at the two of them with interest.

"Sumo, bed," Connor commanded and the St. Bernard obediently went to the living room.

"He never listens to my commands," Hank complained. Connor just smiled and rolled his hips, bringing Hank's attention to completely different matters.

They kept kissing and grinding against each other, and Connor started to make needy little noises that made Hank feel like he was going to spill himself in his pants like a horny teen.

Connor, however, had other ideas. He slid off Hank's lap and kneeled in front of him, raising his hands to unzip Hank's pants and free his fully erect cock.

Hank's breath hitched in his throat at the sight of his swollen cock right next to Connor's gorgeous lips. Connor was looking up to him, silently seeking his permission. And while Hank wanted nothing more than to give in, to bury himself in that perfect mouth, something was holding him back.

"Come on, honey, let me suck you, I promise I'll make it good for you," Connor said huskily, and Hank recoiled, his erection flagging instantly. Because suddenly, this wasn't Connor at all. The reason Hank gave in and went along with this in the park was that it seemed genuine, fucking _real_. This? This was anything but.

"Connor, please be honest with me. Do you even want this?" he asked tiredly.

Connor was looking at him with partly opened lips and his temple light a whirling yellow.

"Androids cannot want things," Connor said quietly, his eyes begging Hank to understand.

Hank tugged himself back and rose from the chair. There was nothing for him to understand. Because he'd only ever had sex when the other party wanted it as well, and he wasn't going to change it now.

…

Hank was finally coming home after another shitty day. A raid he went on with Reed after being notified of noises coming from a supposedly abandoned apartment left him completely drained, and not just because he was pushed by the fleeing android suspect and almost fell off the roof, and for a moment there it looked like Reed seriously contemplated going after the suspect and leaving Hank hanging there, the fucker. He helped Hank in the end _and_ managed to catch the suspect after all, but then the android chose to jump off the roof rather than be brought in for questioning.

 _ra9 save me,_ was the last thing the android had said before he hurled himself into the void, the height being too much for Hank and Reed to hear even an echo of the sound he made on impact.

"Fucking androids," Reed spat out when he finally caught his breath after the wild chase. Hank grunted in agreement, but couldn't stop feeling like they went about this wrong. Because the thing was, this android hadn't even fucking done anything. Well, apart from pushing Hank off the damn roof, but Hank didn't really hold it against him as he could see the android was desperate. _Just like Daniel._ _Probably_ _Ortiz's droid too._

He just escaped the farm he worked at and turned into that crazy pigeon lady from _Home Alone_. Crazy, but harmless. The whole thing left Hank with some sort of a bad aftertaste, and he was fully prepared to go home and flush it off with whiskey, feeling like a worn rug once the surge of adrenaline left his body, when they got a call from the station.

They seemed to have gotten a potential witness – an unemployed homeless man about Hank's age who claimed he had seen Michael Browning on Seminole Street together with an android.

"His exact words were 'android weirdo' and he said he didn't mean 'weirdo' as in all 'androids are weird' but as in 'real-life terminator', whatever that means," Chris told them on the phone, and Hank realized with a slight pang that the other officer was probably too young to have seen Hank's favorite movie series.

"He's high as a kite, though," Chris added. "We tried to give him something to make him snap out of it but nothing's working. You should try to get here while he's still coherent."

Hank sent Connor a short message saying that he was going to be late again, and then he and Reed hurried to make it to the station as fast as possible, but the freaking Urban Farms were on the outskirts and the station was in downtown Detroit, and in the rush hour on top of that it took them almost a half an hour to get there.

"Fuck," Hank swore tiredly when they learned the witness had to be taken to the hospital meanwhile, as he started to show signs of overdosing, and the interrogation was postponed until God knew when. _Just their luck._

At least he could go home after that.

He was now approaching the house, noticing that the living room light was on. Connor had not gone into his stasis yet, then.

Right now, Hank wasn't actively avoiding Connor, though the hours he put in his job might have made it seem otherwise, especially in combination with the awkwardness once again reigning in the Anderson household.

He chickened out of another shopping trip with Connor, making the android order his winter clothes online instead. In the hindsight, it wasn't such a bright idea because when the packages with the items Connor had ordered arrived, Hank was treated to his own private fashion show.

Even though it was mostly things like hats and scarfs, Hank had almost lost the fight against the urge to kiss Connor senseless, especially in the face of how happy the android seemed as he turned around playfully to show off his new things, gazing at Hank with a coy smile.

But in the end, his resolve stood firm. Hank realized they should probably talk about this. But then again, what was there to talk about? Last time things got heated, Connor had made it clear that he was just a machine. Or at least saw himself that way, which was the same thing for Hank.

Hank sighed, watching his own breath coming out in white puffs. As he stood here reluctant to enter his own house, he wondered, not for the first time, what the hell Connor did all those long hours Hank's work – and let's be honest, sometimes also drinking – kept him away from home. He was never one to think that housewives spent most of their days watching soaps while applying garish nail polish on their toenails with their hair done up in rollers – he had to chuckle when he imagined Connor doing exactly that – but given the android's general efficiency, cleaning, cooking and taking care of Sumo still had to leave him with a lot of free time on his hands. Driven by a sudden surge of curiosity, Hank approached the living room window and took a peek inside.

 _Oh shit._ Now he wished Connor were painting his toenails rainbow with a roller on that ridiculously cute curl of his, because that'd be odd but harmless. What he was actually doing was more in line with Fowler's spy theories.

Connor was peering at the screen of Hank's slightly old-fashioned computer. Reed might make jabs at Hank for being an old man, but there was nothing wrong with his eyesight, so he was 100% positive that the object of Connor's scrutiny was a picture of Carlos Ortiz's corpse. The layout of the page it appeared on gave it out as nothing else but an official case file. Which was of course confidential and password protected.

So they were going to have a talk after all. Just not the one Hank had envisaged.

…

When Hank got to the living room, making sure he made all the usual noises as he entered the house, he was greeted by the sight of Connor lounging on the couch with the sleeping Sumo, looking for all the world like he hadn't left that exact spot for hours.

"You're not so late after all," Connor said, sounding pleased. "Should I go heat up your dinner?" he asked and moved to rise from his position.

"Maybe later," Hank said and gestured for Connor to sit back. He took a chair from his desk and placed it so he could straddle it and face Connor with the coffee table separating them in a perfect interrogation set up, disturbed only by the sounds made by the snoring St. Bernard.

Connor's LED light stayed blue, but a puzzled frown appeared on his face.

"Is something the matter?"

"Apart from the fact that you're a fucking spy sent by the Russians, not much," Hank said with his anger held barely in check.

The quality of the frown on Connor's face shifted; now it seemed to express concern.

"Hank, are you inebriated? Your vital signs tell me otherwise, but it's still the most likely explanation because you're not making any sense," Connor said.

"Who sent you, Connor? Why're you spying on me?" Hank barked at the android, making Sumo start to swing his tail in irritation, but still staying in his spot.

"I'm not spying on you!" Connor's voice raised voice sounded almost like that of a scolded child. His LED light now flickered between yellow and red.

"Then answer me this – were you or were you not looking at the case files on my computer?"

"Yes, but not for the reason you seem to think. I just realized that I have considerable analyzing capacities that are not put into use, and I wanted to help you. As your cases involve androids and I am one, I thought an android's perspective-"

"Fuck your perspective," Hank spat out, seething. He wanted to hit the table for good measure, but as it reached only to his knees, it would look somewhat awkward, so he refrained.

"How about asking me about this first?" he shot at Connor.

"Three days ago, you refused to share some information pertaining these cases with me, stating confidentiality as the reason," Connor said, once again sounding perfectly calm, even though his LED kept spinning. Hank really envied him his ability to get a grip on himself this fast.

"And?" he prompted.

"I didn't ask you to let me access the files because I assumed you would refuse," Connor replied with a perfect nonchalance, as though it wasn't absolutely preposterous.

"Well you got that one right. So you went and did it behind my back," Hank stated the obvious, a little impressed at Connor's gall despite himself.

"I really wanted to help," Connor said and something in his brown eyes was imploring Hank to believe him. "You're trying so hard to solve these cases, you've been pushing yourself too hard. You need to eat and sleep, you are not –"

"A machine. Got it," Hank finished the sentence. He felt that his anger was gone, just like that. From the day one, Connor had always been putting Hank's needs first. His programming was just goddamn perfect that way.

"So you've done your analyzing. Found anything?" Hank asked, a note of resignation creeping into his voice.

"I think I did. May I show you?" Connor asked, rising from the sofa.

"Might as well. No need to tell you the password, eh?" Hank muttered as he followed Connor to the computer.

With just a few movements of his nimble fingers, Connor opened two image files. The first image was the one Hank saw Connor looking at through the window, the one with Ortiz's body and the writings above it. Connor juxtaposed it with the picture of the wall from Browning's crime scene.

"I've compared these writings," the android told Hank. "And they don't appear to be written by the same person. Or android, for that matter. The pressure with which the writings were made seems more homogenous in Ortiz's case, and the letters are less slanted. Moreover, look at the spelling. Here, it spells "ra9", all letters in lowercase, while the writings in Browning's case utilize only capital letters. Also, the writer used a contraction here," Connor pointed out at "I'M ALIVE" scribbled in the abandoned house, "while opting out of it there," he said, moving his finger over a similar writing on Ortiz's wall.

"Humans might be erratic, acting on a whim, but androids are methodical. I don't think there would be so many differences had an android done both of these crimes," he concluded his speech.

"Deviant androids can be erratic as well," Hank objected.

"That's correct," Connor admitted. "But I do not think it would manifest in writing chaotically like this. Correct spelling is very important to androids."

"I would know; you've corrected my damn shopping lists," Hank snorted.

"But this is all just a theory, as the sample size of two is very inconclusive," Connor informed him.

"Would three be better?"

Connor abruptly turned from the screen to face Hank.

"Was there another-"

"Murder? No, not that, thank God. Just a fugitive android squatting in an empty apartment with about a bazillion of pigeons. Yikes. Never been a bird fan, myself. Reed went after him after almost letting me fall off the roof, ruthless bastard he is. He got him in the end, but the android threw himself off the building." Hank paused, gauging Connor's reaction to his story. There had been a barely noticeable twitch in Connor's left eye when he mentioned the part with Reed, but now his face expressed nothing but attentive interest.

"Anyhow, the point is that there were similar writings in that Hitchcockian apartment. The files should be online by now; give me a moment to update," Hank said, issued the necessary command and went to retrieve his chair.

Once he got it, he slumped in it in relief. His body was aching all over; adrenaline could only keep you going for so long. When cool fingers started to massage his neck, he sighed in bliss.

"You think a backrub can get you back into my good graces?" Hank mumbled a little sleepily.

"I'm already there; now I just want you to feel good," Connor said lightly as his fingers unerringly found a really irritating knot just above Hank's shoulder blade.

"You sure you're not scanning me?" Hank asked with a weak chuckle, letting himself relax into the touch.

"I don't really need to anymore," Connor whispered right into his ear, and if Hank wasn't so tired, his body would have definitely reacted to that.

A ping let them know the download was completed. Hank forced himself to unstick his eyelids. The screen now seemed a little blurred, but finding the required image file fortunately only took a moment.

The writings in the escaped android's apartment spelled "ra9" in all lowercase and "I AM ALIVE" without a contraction, just like in Ortiz's house.

"I think this should rule out an android perpetrator," Connor said with his fingers still working on Hank's shoulders.

Hank sighed.

"I wish. I'd be more than happy to ditch that stupid theory, but… we had a witness claiming he definitely saw Browning with an android, but he ODed before we could talk to him some more."

"You're saying he was a drug user. Exactly how reliable this testimony is, then?"

Hank rubbed his eyes and dragged himself off the chair.

"God knows. You've done some good work here, kid," he told Connor, who practically beamed at the praise.

 _Not bad for a blow-up doll,_ an echo of his own biting words ran through Hank's head. He wasn't going to repeat _that_ , but he couldn't exactly let Connor get away with this either.

"But you weren't exactly cut out for this," Hank said even though he hated how Connor's smile significantly dimmed at his words. "So I'd appreciate it if you left detective work to professionals from now on. If you have unused capacities or whatever, you can always get a hobby. Knitting, doing crossword puzzles, maybe playing the guitar, that sort of thing."

He chuckled a little when he saw Connor pouting his lips and reached out to tousle his hair.

"Good night," Hank said gently. But even though he told Connor to give up on trying to play detective, he knew with crystal clarity that he was not going to change his computer password.


	14. Chapter 14

_A/N:_ _Still not done with the paper, but I just couldn't stay away from this story. I guess it means I'm now officially a deviant :)._

* * *

Three days later found Hank once again investigating a case together with Gavin Reed. Reed was driving, if you could call it that in the case of something even a toddler could control. To give him credit, Reed also owned a nice non-automated '19 Mustang, but he never used it for work.

"You know what Fowler told me today?" Reed asked Hank as he let the car navigate through the heavy traffic of the evening downtown. "They were gonna send us 'help' from CyberLife for the deviant cases. A fucking plastic detective, can you imagine?"

"Those bastards from CyberLife really stop at nothing, don't they," Hank muttered. "Last I heard, they planned to make robot priests to officiate weddings."

"Like there's a need to make it into a bigger farce than it already is," Reed, who went through two nasty divorces, spat out.

Hank, divorcee himself, let out a noncommittal grunt. "Goddamn machines," he added almost as an afterthought, with no real feeling behind it.

Because in the end, it always came down to how shitty _humans_ could be, didn't it. All those androids didn't make themselves – no, scratch that, maybe now they did, but Hank's point was that it didn't start that way. In the beginning, someone up there had to decide that mass-producing robotic clerks, maids, doctors, priests and hookers was a-okay.

"The Alzheimer finally done you in, old man, orwhat?" Reed impatiently interrupted Hank's train of thought, "I said we're here," he told Hank and left the car. Hank followed him, taking a look at the garish neon sign announcing that they had indeed reached their destination – the Eden Club, allegedly containing 'the sexiest androids in town'.

"Fuck me sideways!" Reed sputtered, obviously not tempted by the offer. "Fowler said sex club, not a freaky doll show."

"We've got a job to do," Hank reminded him a little tiredly. All these android-related crimes were draining him already, and Reed's attitude was not helping. His hatred for androids seemed to be something pointy and personal, like almost everything about the man, and Hank couldn't help but feel like going to the place with Reed was a recipe for disaster.

The inside of the club was filled with the kind of soulless dance music Hank hated. They entered a windowless, neon-lit hall with showcases lining the walls, each containing a scantily-clad male or female pleasure android. The sight of those showcases made Hank feel uneasy; Reed's freaky doll show comment was actually quite accurate.

Ben directed them to the crime scene, which was located in one of the private rooms. A cursory glance showed them a dead man lying on his back on a lavish bed, halfway covered with a red satin sheet. An unmoving female android was lying in the corner near the sink, her face stained with blue blood.

Reed took one look at the man's body and made a predictable joke about him getting more action than he could handle, moving to check out the displays showing things like the drinks offered and fantasy scenarios the android workers could play out for their clients.

"The Naughty Dog and His Stern Mistress," Reed read out. "I'm guessing it means that the customer dresses as a furry and the android disciplines him. Obviously not what our friend here went for, but a dog-lover like you might be into it, eh?" he said with a lewd chuckle.

"Woof," was Hank's deadpan reply while he focused on the victim's driving license, which told him that his name was Michael Graham and he was 37 years old. _A tad young for a heart attack_ , Hank thought. And sure enough, it didn't take him long to find that the man's neck was badly bruised.

"See these bruises over here?" he asked Reed. "We'll have to wait for what the coroner has to say about it, but I doubt he's done it to himself."

Reed grunted his approval, but his eyes didn't leave the 'choose your fantasy' screen. "There's a finger print over one of the options," he told Hank. "'Play with Two Girls at Once'. They should scrub the rooms clean after every customer, so I guess this was our guy's choice. Meaning this was originally a threesome, with two droids involved. So the question is – where's the other one? You think it escaped?" Reed asked him.

"Nah, someone would've spotted it. Let's see if there are cameras or something. I'll go ask the manager, you can try questioning the droids in the showcases opposite the door to this room," Hank said, already on his way out.

"Question the _droids_? Are you kiddin' me?" Reed yelled after him. Hank ignored him and approached the manager, a sleazy looking bearded man whose name tag read Floyd Mills. Before he got any further than asking Mills if they'd experienced any deviant troubles and receiving a reply about one escaped android about a month ago, a very angry Gavin Reed caught up with him.

"Anderson! I tried talking to one and it told me it'll only talk if I fucking rent it!" he shouted, his temper once again getting the better of him.

"Then rent it," Hank said courtly. "I'm sure the department will reimburse you later."

"The fuck?" Reed spluttered, but Hank just shook his head.

"I said rent it. And that's an order, Detective," he said. For a moment, Reed looked like he was going to argue some more, but then he just threw his hands up in an exaggerated gesture and went off in a huff.

Hank caught Mills giving him a strange look. The manager was probably thinking something in the lines of 'you know I could open these showcases for you for free as you're the police', but kept silent at the prospect of more profit.

Hank watched Gavin staring at one showcase in obvious discomfort and couldn't help but feel amused at the sight. As the younger detective thought that his stubbly troublemaker allure made him irresistible to everything that breathed, the idea of having to pay for sex – with an android at that – seemed to be downright offensive to him.

 _Well, that'd teach him to make fun of his superiors._ Or probably not, but it was satisfying to watch him squirm.

Petty revenge aside, Hank also wanted Gavin to actually interact with androids, in a vague hope it'd lessen his prejudice, just like the cohabitation with Connor had done it for Hank.

The manager cleared his throat to get Hank's attention.

"D'you have any video records we could see?" Hank asked him, and the manager answered in the negative. "Also, our androids are programmed so that their memory gets wiped every two hours, to protect our customers' privacy," he explained.

Hank nodded, expecting as much. Good thing the crime happened only about an hour ago, so Reed still had a chance with the 'eyewitnesses'. He should, however, know what exactly he was looking for.

"I bet you keep records about which models get rented, don't you?" Hank asked.

"We do that, yeah."

"There's a damaged Traci lying next to the victim. Find me when that model was rented last and which one was rented about the same time with the same credit card," Hank told Mills. Mills acquiesced and went away to the staff room, presumably to consult some sort of terminal. Upon his return, Hank learned that they were looking for a blue-haired female model, and conveyed the information to the sulking Reed, who was just about to reluctantly stick his credit card into another showcase.

He then caught the manager, who seemed to think his job here was done.

"One more question," Hank said in a low voice, making sure Reed couldn't hear him. Because the next thing he was going to ask wasn't exactly case related.

"Do any of your droids have pain sensors?" he asked, not bothering to explain why he wanted to know.

Mills shook his head.

"Not right now, we don't have any with those. They're very expensive, you know. But we used to have one. A pretty looking thing, it was in high demand for BDSM, rough play, you can imagine."

Unfortunately, Hank could, and vividly at that.

"It was glitching, though," Mills went on, completely unbothered by Hank's grim expression. "Doin' some weird analyzing thing. Once it sucked a john's cock and then told him the exact composition of his jizz, can you believe it? Anyway, two weeks ago or thereabouts a john roughed it up so bad we couldn't put it back together. We made the bastard who did it pay through his teeth, so there was no need to call the police."

 _Of course there wasn't; it was not like anyone got hurt. Just some property damaged beyond repair._

Hank wasn't hangover today, but suddenly felt like he was going to be sick anyway. He _knew_ that Connor had been with him for more than a month so there was no way he was the pleasure android Mills had– _so callously_ – told him about but the idea of _Connor_ being in here, first stuck in one of those creepy glass boxes and then being bought by someone like Michael Graham to end up bloodied and unmoving made him nauseous.

Reed chose this moment to get Hank's attention by hollering at him while frantically gesturing at an unassuming door between two private rooms. Hank took a deep breath, forcing himself to stay focused on the case, and followed him.

The space the narrow corridor led them to appeared to be a warehouse of sorts, with eerily still androids standing in rows, presumably waiting their turn in the club. One dim corner revealed a pile of robotic limbs.

"They get used till they break, then they get tossed out," Hank muttered grimly, and only after Reed eyed him strangely did he realize he said that out loud.

"People are so fucked up nowadays," was Reed's answering comment. "They don't want relationships anymore, everybody just gets a plastic doll. They cook what you want, they screw when you want. You don't have to worry about how they feel. Next thing you know, we're gonna be extinct because everybody would rather fuck a piece of plastic than have a relationship with a fellow human being," he finished his pessimistic musings.

 _Maybe being extinct would serve us right_ , Hank thought as he examined several crates with android spare parts.

One part of what Gavin said resonated deeply with him. _You don't have to worry about how they feel_. Connor had repeatedly told Hank that he didn't feel anything. That androids were incapable of emotions. What Hank had seen of deviants – _and of Connor himself_ – made him wonder, though.

"Watch out!" Gavin cried out, and then there was no more time for speculations.

…

Hank stared at the two girl androids as they moved to climb over the fence, his mind completely blank and the gun in his hand all but forgotten. During the unexpected yet vicious fight, the two Tracis managed to knock out Reed and almost bested Hank himself. He ran after them outside, wincing as his bruised ribs protested against the movement, only to find he was unable to shoot at them.

Because Hankthe blood on the face of the android they found at the crime scene probably didn't get there by accident; if Hank stumbled upon the same tableau in an all-human establishment, there would be no doubt that the escaped girl killed the customer in self-defense.

The blue-haired Traci proved Hank's assumptions true by explaining herself, and God did Hank's idle wish about humanity going extinct grew much stronger after hearing her speech. Because if those androids were self-aware, as they seemed to, this place was true hell.

Just as they were almost over the fence, the previously incapacitated Reed ran outside with his gun in his hand, looking dead set on using it.

"Don't shoot!" Hank shouted. The split-second it took Gavin to throw him a somehow puzzled look before refocusing on the escaping deviants was all the two androids needed to disappear in the dark.

"Were you helping them?" Gavin asked incredulously, looking shocked and a little pale. _He probably should have his head checked for a concussion_.

"They've done nothing wrong. She killed in self-defense, just wanting to stay alive. She said… she said they were in love," Hank told Gavin with wonder in his voice.

"Do you honestly believe that?" Gavin asked Hank, apparently already recovering from his shock as his voice regained its usual aggressive cadence. "Do you watch your toaster getting it off with the microwave every night? Cause that'd explain why you have a few wires burnt in here," he said with a sneer while twisting his fingers in a meaningful way close to his head.

Hank ignored the juvenile insult, focusing just on the first part of what Gavin said. Did he believe androids were capable of love? He wasn't sure. But the idea filled him with a hope so raw he felt he could choke on it.

"Let's wrap this up," he said out loud. Reed eyed him speculatively, but fortunately refrained from further comments.

…

After the time Hank had found Connor all over his confidential case files, he didn't think he might stumble upon the android doing anything even more unexpected. Naturally, he was in for a surprise.

"What the actual fuck," was all he managed to get out when he came home to the sight of Connor sitting cross-legged on the couch and mauling Hank's old guitar, eliciting sounds a cat might make if you stepped on its tail hard enough. To make this experience even more memorable, each infernal note was accompanied by a heartfelt howl, courtesy of Sumo.

"I've taken your advice," Connor informed Hank. "I'm currently trying to learn to play the guitar."

 _Trying definitely being the operative word here,_ Hank thought as Connor wrested another soul-crushing noise from the instrument to illustrate his words. The expression he wore was one of such wide-eyed innocence that Hank was sure the android had been actually messing with the files again, only grabbing the guitar when he heard Hank's key in the lock. He betted that if he touched his computer case, it'd be still warm.

However, it was once again very late, and after today and the Eden Club he was so fed up with everything work-related he decided to play along with this.

"How exactly are you learning? By torturing the guitar until it begs you for mercy and starts to play on its own?" he asked, aiming for gruff, but feeling a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth without his volition.

"I've downloaded a tutorial program," Connor explained with what was obviously a feigned indignation. "I'm viewing it as we speak."

"Uh-huh. I haven't played this thing for years, so it's horribly out of tune. Didn't your program tell you to tune it first?"

"I might have… skipped the introductory part," Connor confessed a little guiltily.

Hank gave a knowing nod. _Definitely snooping again, then._

"Okay, so let me tune this up for you," he said generously, sat down next to Connor and reached for the instrument. "Sing me an E," he said, guessing Connor should be programmed for that. Sure enough, the sound Connor let out was in perfect pitch, in sharp contrast to the screeches he had been forcing Hank's guitar to make. Hank asked Connor to sing an A, moving to the following string.

"Now play me some E minor," he commanded after returning the now tuned guitar to the android.

Connor obeyed, his eyes focusing on something only he could see, presumably the tutorial he downloaded.

Hank winced. The chord was more or less okay now, but the way Connor's fingers were strumming the strings looked downright painful.

"Scoot over," he said in a low voice, moving to sit behind Connor. He reached with his right hand to cover Connor's, bending the angle of his wrist. "My old music teacher used to say that you should imagine that you've got feathers stuck to your fingers, and you're tryin' to shake them off. Like this," he murmured and showed Connor the motion.

"Why would you have feathers stuck to your fingers?" Connor asked in puzzlement as he tried to copy Hank's movement.

"From petting a chicken? God knows," Hank answered with a small chuckle and reached with his other hand to correct the way Connor was gripping the guitar's neck.

"Much better," he praised Connor when the android repeated the chord. "You should feel it all the way up to your elbow, do you?"

"I do," Connor said quietly, sounding a little out of breath. Hank swallowed, suddenly realizing how close they were, with Connor's back pressing at Hank's slightly sore chest and their cheeks almost touching.

"Let's try C major next," he growled and moved back to his original position, resolutely ignoring the pang of disappointment his body was sending his way.

He watched in silence – and from a safer distance – as Connor struggled with the strings with his brows drawn together in concentration, and his heart started to feel too big for his chest. He didn't know Connor's feelings, or whether something – _someone_ – like him could even have them, but he was old enough to acknowledge his own.

* * *

 _A/N:_ _So. I've got a few things to say about the Eden Club. Rewriting this one without Connor was the hardest so far; it's the first time I had to re-watch the scene to be able to write it at all. BUT at the same time I relished doing it because the Eden Club is IMHO the dumbest part of the game, done for the gameplay purposes only (to provide the player with that exciting camera chase) and not making any sense whatsoever from plot POV. Because they've got the manager RIGHT THERE and Hank still has to pay hundreds of bucks to access some androids' memories? Come on! Can you imagine that in real police work? Like there's a murder in a strip club, the cops come to investigate and they're like, 'oh, why talk to the manager when we can rent all the hookers and talk to them instead'? Duh._


	15. Chapter 15

_I've done the thing I was supposed to do, still've got some conference speeches to prepare but nothing that urgent, so I can finally focus on what I wanna do – writing this story :)_

After the impromptu guitar lesson was over, Hank dragged himself to the bed and for once had no trouble falling asleep, as the time spent together with Connor took his mind off things that usually kept him awake. This time, he fell into deep slumber unaided by alcohol and had the chance to actually have a good night's sleep, unperturbed by nightmares. Unfortunately, this chance was taken from him by a phone call about half past five.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, sir, but it's the Hummingbird," Chris Miller told him in a grave tone.

"Oh fuck," Hank swore automatically, because this codename had been recently assigned to the serial killer case. Chris proceeded to give Hank the address, which appeared to be located somewhere on the outskirts this time, as the street name didn't ring any bells to Hank.

He dressed himself with stiff movements and forced himself to gulp down some water before leaving the house, but his limbs felt sluggish and heavy and the inside of his head was full of cotton. He had a feeling like he was supposed to remember something important, but nothing came to him through the fog.

 _I'm lucky there's so little traffic this early_ , was Hank's thought as he furiously blinked at the empty dark highway stretching ahead, trying to chase away the sleep that kept treacherously sneaking up on him. He turned on the music, the angry screaming of the singer from one of his favorite metal bands making him a little more alert, but he still found himself wishing that he had accepted the offer Fowler made him.

Jeffrey called him to his office two days ago and pointed out, quite reasonably, that Hank shouldn't be in charge of two ongoing investigations at once. He offered to take him off one of them, even giving Hank a choice. Hank, being the dumb prideful jerk he was, told the Chief where he could stick his offer and insisted he could finish both investigations.

"Shit," he muttered as he almost missed a turn, making his car's tires screech in protest as he swerved to the right. He was too fucking old for this; right now he didn't even understand himself what he was trying to prove here.

When he finally reached the scene of the newest crime, the sun was just starting to rise, painting the eastern sky scattered with puffy clouds crimson. The red cumulus clouds were reflected in the rows of identical square windows of what looked like abandoned barracks.

This functionalistic concrete building with flat roof dating back to at least the 1980s had become obsolete both in style and purpose, as two-thirds of the U.S. army forces were now androids who didn't require this type of accommodation; when they weren't needed, they could just stand lined up in some warehouse like the Terracotta Army.

The facility was too close to residential areas to serve as a regular meeting place for organized crime, but presented an ideal location for isolated unlawful acts such as this one.

As soon as Hank crawled out of his car to go meet up with Chris, he noticed two things. The first was a flock of chickens wondering aimlessly across the patch of dirt in front of the barracks, which made him do a double take, but before he could start to wonder about that his attention was commanded by the second of these things, which was a roar of a helicopter waiting nearby. There was a red cross on it. _Medical_? Hank thought with a frown. In the next moment, a door to the building burst open and a team of paramedics hurried to roll out a gurney with a body.

"Jesus, it's just a kid. At least he's alive," Hank rasped as he watched the medics haul away a small body buried under a load of blankets to protect it against the bitter morning cold. He had to fight an onslaught of unwanted memories of seeing his son like this.

"We only found out he was still alive after we called you," Chris told him. "We couldn't feel his pulse and thought he was dead, but when the medics arrived and scanned him they found he was hanging on, barely so," Chris said, following the gurney with a pained expression, undoubtedly thinking about his own child back at home.

The helicopter took off a mere moment after, disappearing in the crimson-hued clouds.

"Lead the way," Hank told Chris after composing himself, moving towards the entrance the paramedics had just used. Chris cleared his throat. "Actually, the attack took place in one of the rooms, and it's really cramped in there, so we have to take turns investigating it," he explained a little sheepishly, probably feeling bad for having to wake his superior only to tell him he had to wait to see the crime scene. "But we've got a witness," he added hurriedly.

"We do?" Hank asked, feeling his hope spike. A witness might go a long way toward finally catching that sonofabitch.

Chris nodded while starting to lead Hank to a different entrance to the building, his firm strides echoing in the now silent courtyard.

"She's the reason the boy's not dead. From what we understand, she caught the perp red-handed," Chris explained.

"What d'you mean, from what we understand?" Hank asked, a little perplexed.

"Her name is Fernanda Herrera, and she speaks next to no English. The captain told me you could speak Spanish, so I thought-"

Hank snorted. Maybe he was able to speak Spanish some thirty-odd years ago, around the time he had gotten his high school diploma, but he'd had little use for it ever since. It must've still figured somewhere in his file, though. Hank had to suppress a bitter smile when he imagined how that'd look like.

 _Hank Anderson, 50 years old. Used to be respected, is now a drunk has-been. Speaks some Spanish._

"Don't worry, Lieutenant," Chris hurried to reassure him as they entered a narrow corridor illuminated by that type of bright white light that made people look like zombies, "we already asked Detective Hernandez from Vice to help us out but it'll take her some time to get here, and-"

"Time's of the essence, got it," Hank interrupted him, brushing past Chris to the makeshift interrogation room they'd just reached, where a small Latino woman maybe a few years younger than Hank sat on a foldable chair huddled in a grey safety blanket. Her somehow birdlike features were pinched in what looked like distress, and she was cradling a cup of something hot in her hands.

Hank gingerly lowered himself to a similar chair, hoping it would support his weight. It creaked in objection, but held together.

" _Señora Herrera_?" he asked, the sounds feeling strange in his mouth.

" _Sí_ ," she said simply, rising her bead-like black eyes to meet his.

Hank took a deep breath. _Sí_. _Okay_. _I can work with a sí_ , he thought. But then the woman suddenly started to speak, unprompted, the words pouring out of her like a waterfall. The only sounds he could make from the rapid-fire Spanish targeted at him were " _pollos_ " and " _el diablo_ ", chickens and the devil, which didn't make much sense to him at first, but then he remembered the chickens outside the barracks.

" _Los pollos fuera. Son su_?" he strung together what he hoped was a question asking whether the chickens outside belonged to the woman. She nodded enthusiastically, launching into another long Spanish monologue. Hank couldn't understand half of it, but he somehow gathered that she had recently moved from a house to an apartment, and having no place to put her chickens, she decided to surreptitiously keep them on an abandoned government property nearby her new home. She went here every morning to feed them; that's how she got here today, right at the time of the attempted murder.

The next part was harder, though. He tried to formulate a question about what the perpetrator looked like, but all that was going through his mind were some old ditties about having a black shirt and going to the beach.

He shook his head. _Focus. He needed to focus. And coffee, lots of it._ He barked an order to get him some to Chris who was standing at the door. Meanwhile, though, he had to make do with that goo he seemed to have for brain at the moment.

It cost Hank some dignity and a lot of most definitely idiotic looking gestures, but he seemed to finally succeed in asking about the murderer's appearance, as Mrs. Herrera nodded in understanding.

" _Como_ _el diablo_ ," she told him firmly.

"If you could specify? _Más específico_?" Hank asked.

"His eyes," Mrs. Herrera said in Spanish, slowly this time so Hank had no troubles making out her words. "They were red."

…

It had been dark when Hank had left the house and it was now dark again when he was driving back. Darkness suited his mood just fine.

The boy, an eleven-year old called Tom Iwashita, survived the journey to the hospital but slipped into a coma, and his prognosis wasn't good. If he made it until tomorrow, it'd be a miracle. When Hank finally got to the crime scene proper, he wondered how the boy even survived, because it looked like a slaughterhouse in the small room with all the blood spilled on the floor.

By the looks of it, the killer was planning to repeat his sinister graffiti, but only got to the first letter when Herrera surprised him. Now there was a single "I" drawn in blood on the wall opposite the door.

"Who the fuck are you," Hank muttered to himself, staring at the vertical red line.

Unfortunately, Detective Hernandez couldn't get much more out of their witness than Hank already had. Fernanda Herrera only saw the murderer for a split-second, he was an average-built male, Caucasian probably, aged anything between 25 and 50, she couldn't really tell as it was dark in the room; the only thing she was certain of were the red glowing eyes.

They hoped that the fact Herrera caught the perpetrator in the act meant he hadn't had the time to cover his tracks like before, but they were wrong. The place proved just as meticulously scrubbed clean of any evidence as the previous ones.

The general hopelessness Hank felt due to the lack of leads was made worse by his brief, yet memorable encounter with Deborah Iwashita.

…

On his way to the hospital lounge, Hank kept envisaging a weeping mother that would hate him for doing something as callous as question her while she waited for the outcome of her son's surgery. He recalled being a blabbering mess in her position; if anyone questioned him about the accident at the time, he couldn't even remember.

Deborah Iwashita wasn't a mess. Hank found her primly sitting in the white-leathered armchair, dressed in a slightly old-fashioned lady suit that was all crisp and ironed, with brown hair in a neatly trimmed bob framing her face, nary a hair out of place.

She was peering at him with clear blue eyes over the rim of large spectacles, her expression completely neutral. Hank knew some people were shell-shocked into displaying this sort of steel façade, but something was telling him this wasn't the case.

"Mrs. Iwashita? I'm very sorry for what happened to Tom. But I'm sure he'll pull through, he seems to be a fighter," Hank told her, trying to sound reassuring although the boy's prognosis was still grim. But the fighter part was true, at least. Hank still couldn't reconcile the amount of blood at the crime scene with the fact the victim made it out alive.

"Whether my son lives or dies is completely at God's hands. I trust His judgment," she replied aloofly.

Hank inwardly groaned. She was quickly turning out to be the type of religious nut he absolutely hated.

"Where is his father?" he asked aloud.

"Tom has no father," she replied. Hank resisted the urge to roll his eyes. _Yeah, and he's gonna go join the Dark Side and call himself Darth Vader one of these days._ He couldn't say he didn't know what she meant by that, though. Hell, he remembered being tempted to give a similar response when people asked about Cole's mom after Joanna had sauntered off to Australia with her new boyfriend.

"His biological father," Hank amended.

"He lives in Japan. We haven't seen him for ten years," Deborah Iwashita answered in a clipped voice.

 _The boy's been raised without a father figure, then._

"Did Tom run away from home?" Hank asked, already knowing the answer was yes giving the contents of a cramped backpack they found in the barracks, which seemed to contain everything the boy probably held dear including a blurred photo of an Asian man that looked cut out from a larger image – _the absent father, undoubtedly_ – and quite a large sum of money.

"I'm afraid so," she said. "You must understand, Tom's always been a handful, but he got much worse once he hit puberty. A few days ago, I caught him watching some- some inappropriate things on the internet," she said, her voice faltering for the first time. She took a breath, composing herself before continuing. "I disciplined him and took away his allowance. He didn't take it well."

The way she pronounced the word 'disciplined' sent chills down Hank's spine.

"When did you find he was missing?" he asked.

"He wasn't home last night when I came back from my gospel meeting, but I hoped he was staying at some friend's house. I would have reported him if he didn't turn up for school today," she said matter-of-factly. _Would you really?_ Hank thought as he looked at her baby blue eyes that managed to appear innocent and heartless at the same time.

 _Wouldn't you rather thank your God for taking away the nuisance standing between you and Him?_

When they received Tom Iwashita's medical report shortly afterwards, Hank couldn't tell he was surprised it mentioned bruises and welts too old to be connected to today's attack.

…

 _Sadistic bitch_ , Hank thought, his hands on the steering wheel shaking a little in powerless rage. She had a child she could love and protect, only to hurt him and drive him away, while Hank would've given anything to hold Cole in his arms once again. To think that it was almost three years he last saw his son was unbearable.

Just as he was entering his driveway, something in his brain clicked and he realized what he had been trying to remember as he left the house. It wasn't almost three years. It was _exactly_ three years; today, November 2, marked the third anniversary of Cole's death.

Today had already managed to make Hank revive some of his most painful memories, but this was the last drop. He checked the time to be sure, but he already knew he wouldn't make it. The cemetery closed at six, and it was now twenty past.

Hank sighed in defeat, briefly resting his head against the steering wheel. Showing up at the cemetery on this very day was a mere gesture, it didn't really make any difference if he went today, tomorrow or any other day. He could just as well pay his respects at home.

That didn't stop him from feeling like he managed to fail his son again.

…

When Hank entered the house, he was greeted by Sumo alone. Connor was nowhere to be seen, which was unusual. A peek into the mostly unused guest bedroom confirmed his suspicion; Connor was powering up in the docking station.

The sight of Connor standing motionlessly like that without his skin made something crack inside of Hank. He insisted on buying the docking station himself and he knew Connor had to power up from time to time, but this was the first time he witnessed him actually using it. Seeing the android like this, all white unmoving plastic, was more than he could take at the moment.

Hank staggered back and closed the door behind him. Then he went to his liquor cabinet to retrieve a bottle of Jack. He didn't feel like getting out ice cubes, so he just poured himself a shot and downed it in one go. It did little to soothe his agitated state of mind, so he took the whole bottle and sat down at the kitchen table, his body as heavy as if someone hung stones around his neck.

He poured himself two more shots, and then just stared at Cole's picture in front of him until his vision started to get a little blurry. The alcohol wasn't helping one bit. He still felt like nothing he was trying to achieve was making any sense.

He worked himself like a dog over this investigation, and for what? _One more boy left only barely alive, probably won't make it till tomorrow._

Hank tried to think of a single reason not to end things here and now. His therapist once told him he should write down a list of reasons to stay alive. Well, all he was seeing through the haze now was a blank slip of paper.

He had made a promise to Cole to hang around a little longer so he could help people, to be someone his son would've been proud of, but was he really helping anyone? He was no closer to finding the murderer than a month ago. Some detective he was. What was he playing at, stubbornly insisting he could do this? _What good did it do to anyone?_

Hank watched his hands tremble almost in detachment. Then they were holding onto something, finally still. It was his gun.

What Gavin said about android detectives – if Hank was gone, maybe they'd send one in his place. One that wouldn't be slowed down by such mundane needs like sleeping or eating or God forbid, personal baggage.

 _Let's play a game, fuckup._

He had a brief vision of Connor looking down at his own lifeless body, his lips parted in mild surprise and his LED light a spinning yellow, looking just like that concierge android did when Daniel was shot. And that'd be that.

 _Because androids didn't feel._

The pressure of the gun against his temple was almost comforting. Hank closed his eyes.

Next thing he knew, the gun was yanked out of his fingers and then someone was shaking him so hard he almost fell off the chair. Hank blinked in confusion, trying to make sense of the expression on Connor's face looming over him, illuminated by a red flickering of his LED. It looked like a mix of fear, anger and betrayal.

 _Fuck, he was getting better at this projecting shit._

"Why the hell would you do that?" Connor asked him in a quivering voice, and Hank must've heard that wrong because _Connor never swore_.

"Why'd you even care?" Hank replied tiredly, his words slurring together. "It's not as though you'd feel anything if I died. Or would you, Connor?"

The android's hands let go of his shoulders and his temple light turned amber. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again.

"Why would you _do_ that?" he repeated his question, and his voice sounded so lost that Hank took pity on him.

"You know, I was raised a Christian, but the shit I've seen over the years made me wonder," he said quietly, not looking at Connor. His fingers were idly caressing Cole's smiling face.

"I had to keep telling myself that there must be a God, because why would any of this matter otherwise? But if there is a God, why would he let Cole die? On the night it happened, I prayed so hard I felt it could make a goddamn hole in the sky, but it still wasn't enough," Hank said, his words sounding increasingly like sobs to his own ears.

Connor didn't say anything to Hank's broken confession, perhaps because he was an android. Or maybe because there was nothing anyone could say to that.

"Can you just," was all Hank managed to choke out, the words 'hold me' sticking in his throat. But Connor was already putting his arms around Hank in what must have looked like an awkward angle, squeezing him as tight as their position allowed. He placed a feather-light kiss on Hank's forehead.

This act of tenderness made the tears Hank had been holding back finally spill down his cheeks.

"Will you let me help, Hank? _Please_?" Connor whispered into his hair and Hank found himself nodding against Connor's chest, for once not caring how weak he must've seemed.

The stones that had been hanging around his neck were gone, just like that.


	16. Chapter 16

_A/N: If there's anyone out these still reading this, maybe drop me a review? I haven't been getting a lot of those and it's making me kind of sad._

* * *

Hank was no stranger to the pounding headache and nausea that came after a night of heavy drinking. The two advils and water waiting for him on his bedside table were still somehow new, though. The sight of these things carefully set there by Connor made him feel thankful and guilty at the same time.

Yesterday's events were coming to him in sickening flashes; the helicopter flying away with the young victim, the blood spilled on the dirty floor, the unbearably self-righteous expression on Deborah Iwashita's face. His ride home. Drinking at the kitchen table.

Hank blinked. He couldn't recall what happened next, but the guilt that sat leaden in his gut was a clue he fucked up big time.

He washed the advils down with water and lay down again, waiting for the headache to subside.  
He'd never had blackouts, and he wasn't having one now; sure enough, it didn't take long for the rest of his evening to come back to him in all its pathetic glory.

 _Taking out his gun for a round of Russian roulette. Being prevented from using it by his android. Crying like a baby in front of said android._

Hank winced and decided he never wanted to leave his bedroom again. A voice that sounded suspiciously like Gavin Reed was asking him what the big deal was – he wouldn't be ashamed if he broke down in front of his coffee maker or toaster, now would he? But that kind of argument might've worked a month ago. Or not even then. What he was feeling now was an unadulterated shame that one could only feel towards another living and thinking being.

As the pressure on his bladder was soon becoming unbearable, Hank eventually had to force himself to crawl out of his bed to reach the bathroom. After freshening himself a little, he made his way to the kitchen, still feeling mostly miserable. He kind of hoped it'd be like the last time something like this happened and Connor would try to avoid him.

 _No such luck_ , he thought as he went through the kitchen door and saw the android standing by the kitchen counter with his arms folded over his chest. As it was still dark outside and only the night light was on, Connor's face was shadowed, illuminated only by the amber circle on his temple.

Hank turned on the light, blinking a little against the brightness, and moved to sit at the table. He realized he must've looked like a slinking dog with its tail between its legs while doing so, and that was before Connor even said anything.

Connor placed a cup of coffee and a plate with scrambled eggs in front of Hank with quiet, efficient motions before reclaiming his position by the counter, even though he usually sat across from Hank at the table. He still didn't say a single word.

 _The silent treatment._ Hank could work with that. However, just as that very thought flashed through Hank's mind, Connor opened his mouth to say:

"Can we talk about last night?"

Hank grimaced.

"Can't we just forget about it?" he suggested sullenly.

Connor's LED light instantly flashed an angry red, but his voice was perfectly composed when he asked:

"You want me to erase my memory of last night's happenings? Because that would be the only way I could achieve that."

Hank winced at Connor's words. When phrased like that, it was kind of a jerk thing to ask for. Before he had the time to formulate a reply, Connor continued:

"I can of course comply with your wish, but I am obliged to warn you that it could inconvenience our further interactions."

Hank sighed. Given that Connor was speaking to him as though he'd eaten a thesaurus for breakfast, he was probably really mad at Hank this time. Well, Hank couldn't blame the android; having a fifty-year-old man snivel all over him couldn't have been pleasant. This time at least Hank decided he would be a man enough to apologize right away.

"Look there. I'm sorry you had to see- what you saw. It won't happen again."

Connor looked at him for a moment. His temple light turned back into a spinning yellow, but his voice was still clipped when he asked:

"This is it? That's all you're going to say?"

Hank stared at him, feeling his hackles starting to raise. _What else was he supposed to say?_ He was reminded of Joanna, always finding faults with whatever he did, none of his apologies ever good enough for her.

"You want a fucking oath written in blood?" he growled.

Another flicker of red. Connor pursed his lips into a thin line.

"I have no need for your blood. But if we're speaking about legally binding documents, you should consider updating your will. You might want to specify whose property I am to become in case of your demise," Connor said, and his words were now not only mechanical, but hoarse with static.

Only now did it dawn on Hank what he had almost done to Connor, who could have been _sold for reuse returned as defective chopped up to pieces_ , all because of Hank's momentary lapse of judgment.

"Connor. I didn't think," he began to say, but Connor didn't let him finish the sentence.

"That much is obvious. Now if you excuse me, I believe Sumo's just woken up," the android said brusquely and brushed past stunned Hank to the living room. As Hank couldn't hear a single sound from that direction, Connor's hearing was either much better than Hank's own, or he'd just pulled the disappearing act on Hank, which was a strategy he must've picked from Hank himself.

…

In the end, Hank went back to his bed, but it took him a lot of tossing and turning before he was able to fall asleep. His mind kept replaying both the events of the night before and the brief morning conversation with Connor, making him feel increasingly like a piece of shit.

He couldn't believe that he tried to shoot himself while Connor was in the house. _Jesus, what was he thinking?_ Well, he wasn't; Connor was right about that one.

Before, Hank had found a certain comfort in knowing that when the pain became too much, he had a way out, clean, fast, and barely inconveniencing anyone. Now this was taken from him. Whether he liked it or not, Connor had become his responsibility and God only knew what would happen to the android if Hank was gone. The blank paper from yesterday now held a single line.

 _Stay alive for Connor._

Hank knew he should be relieved, but all he was feeling as he finally succumbed to a troubled sleep was a sense of disorientation, as though a rug had been pulled from under his feet.

…

The sounds escaping from under the closed door of the guest bedroom were a different world from what Hank came home to the night before last; now they formed recognizable melodies, if still rather tentative.

In just one day, Connor had apparently learned enough chords to play highly simplified versions of some of the saddest fucking songs Radiohead had ever made.

Hank made a face at that. He was pretty sure he mentioned to the android he hated that band and their particular brand of gloom.

It was now three in the afternoon and it was drizzling, making the world outside seem grey and uninviting. Moreover, it was Hank's day off. But even though he could use some more rest, he found himself putting on his jacket and leaving the house.

…

"Shouldn't you be at home today?" Ben asked him with a worried frown after he saw Hank approaching his desk. The _with the boyfriend you've been neglecting lately_ partwent unsaid, but the frown alone had somehow managed to convey it. Hank, however, wasn't in the mood for discussing his personal issues. After all, one of the reasons he came to the station was to avoid just that.

"What's new with the Hummingbird?" he asked curtly. "Did the boy make it?"

"Fortunately, yes. The surgery was a success. Still in coma, though," Ben replied.

Hank nodded. Little Tom was not out of the woods yet, but it was still better news than Hank dared to hope.

"Good. Someone searched their house?"

Ben nodded. "I'll show you what we found on their home computer," he said and handed Hank a pad. "This is their browser history. Look at the search words; I think it's safe to assume those were entered by Tom and not his mom."

"'Am I gay'; 'how to tell if you're gay'; 'boys kissing'; 'how can two men have sex'," Hank read aloud. "Okay, I think I got the picture."

"The last two queries were image searches, but as the parental filter was on, it took him to safe-for-work pics only, _Brokeback Mountain_ posters and the like," Ben explained.

Hank shook his head in exasperation when he remembered his talk with Deborah Iwashita.

"Poor kid. His mother went all Old Testament on him for _that_? Because lying down with a man is an abomination, and all that crap? You know what else is an abomination according to the Old Testament, Ben? Wearing mixed fabrics. And I bet you a hundred that cotton suit of hers had some polyester in it."

"Bigots will be bigots, what can you do," Ben said with a resigned sigh. "But I don't think that's what got her spouting fire and brimstone. There's more." He leaned to open a different file on the pad. "The parental filter apparently didn't work on Tom's emails, because this was in the trash bin."

If Hank's eyes went a little wide at the search words before, now they were practically bulging out of their sockets. Because what he was looking at was definitely not safe for work. Nor was it legal. This was child pornography featuring grown-up men and preteen boys.

A normal parent would be concerned, and probably try to find the sender of the pictures and report them to the police. Deborah Iwashita _disciplined her son_.

"Now look what we found on the kid's phone," Ben told Hank while opening another file. This time, it fortunately wasn't pictures of any kind, but a series of text messages between Tom and someone whose name was saved as Wayne.

11/2/2038 6:24 PM _How are you, Tommy?_  
11/2/2038 6:25 PM hi wayne. mom found the pics u sent me. im grounded w/ no pocket money  
11/2/2038 6:25 PM wanted to buy zombie war 2 for my PS6 so bad:(  
11/2/2038 6:26 PM _I'm sorry to hear that._  
11/2/2038 6:27 PM _Did you like the pictures though?_  
11/2/2038 6:29 PM yes i did ;)  
11/2/2038 6:30 PM _Want to see more?_  
11/2/2038 6:35 PM love to but i dunno what she do if she finds out  
11/2/2038 6:37 PM im scared  
11/2/2038 6:38 PM i think she doesnt love me  
11/2/2038 6:39 PM _Don't be sad, Tommy. I love you._  
11/2/2038 6:39 PM for real?  
11/2/2038 6:41 PM _Yes. I can prove it to you too.  
_ 11/2/2038 6:42 PM how  
11/2/2038 6:44 PM _We can be like those people in the pictures. It's called making love. Would you like to try that with me?_  
11/2/2038 6:51 PM i dunno  
11/2/2038 6:53 PM _Do you love me, Tommy?_  
11/2/2038 6:54 PM yeah. ur the only person who cares bout me wayne  
11/2/2038 6:56 PM _Then you should trust me. If you do this, I'll buy you any games you want._  
11/2/2038 7:10 PM okay  
11/2/2038 7:13 PM _Don't worry, it'll be fun. I know a really cool place where we can meet up._

This was followed by the arrangement of what was supposed to be a late night tryst in the barracks, which, come to think of it, was a really clever choice of a place to lure a young boy to with a promise of some adventure.

Hank looked up to meet Ben's concerned gaze.

"Fuck, this is sickening," he cursed.

Ben nodded his agreement.

"A textbook preying on the vulnerable, emotional manipulation and all," he said tiredly.

"What about the number?" Hank asked.

"A burner phone. Our guy's a clever one."

Hank didn't really expect anything else, considering they hadn't been able to find a single fucking piece of evidence so far.

"Someone should talk to the mother again, see if she had any idea that this was going on," he said.

"Already taken care of," Ben replied. "Gavin's on his way."

Hank felt the corners of his mouth turn slightly upwards at this. If there was something Gavin Reed hated more than androids, it was people like Deborah Iwashita. That made him just about the ideal person for the job.

…

When Hank got home about nine in the evening after stopping at Chicken Feed on his way home, feeling downright rebellious as he devoured a particularly greasy burger, he half expected to be greeted by Connor's stilted rendition of _Creep_ , but the android had seemed to have tired of that – _probably because there was no Hank around for him to annoy with it_ – and was now sprawled on the couch with a half sleeping Sumo, watching something on the TV. Connor didn't acknowledge Hank's presence in any way, while Sumo at least gave him a lazy wag of his tail by way of greeting.

Hank came closer to take a peek at the screen.

"Is that House, M.D.?" he asked, slightly surprised at Connor's choice of viewing material. Hank himself had always disliked hospital-set dramas, even before the accident, but this particular one was an exception, as he quite enjoyed both the medical puzzles and Dr. House's snarkiness.

"Yes; Helen recommended it to me. I find the range of medical conditions humans can get fascinating," Connor replied with his eyes glued to the screen.

Hank snorted.

"I bet you do. How's Helen, anyway?"

Hank was officially no longer the only human Connor talked to. When he was walking Sumo some two weeks ago, he was approached by a girl with two Corgis claiming she used to walk Sumo for Hank.

He'd been wary at first, because Hank had spoken to him at length about how public opinion on androids was going sour, but as Sumo proceeded to enthusiastically lick the girl's face, much to the loudly voiced jealousy of the two Corgis, Connor had no problem to believe she was who she claimed to be.

"And I don't think I've got anything to fear from anyone you handpicked to take care of Sumo," Connor had added, and Hank could find no fault with this. Connor thus made himself a friend; he now occasionally walked Sumo together with Helen and her various 'clients' when she was working in the neighborhood. What the two of them talked about, though, Hank could only wonder about.

"She's thinking about offering dog grooming services as well," Connor said to Hank's question while still intently following the happenings on the screen, where Dr. House was inspecting an elderly patient's toes. "I think it's a sound idea, but she should ask Alessandro – I didn't know there were fungi in this color," Connor commented suddenly, and then didn't bother to return to his original sentence.

 _Huh_. Connor seemed really into the show, if he had troubles simultaneously holding a conversation with Hank. Or was this his way to show Hank he was still pissed at him?

His mood ring, as Hank had christened Connor's LED light to himself, was a serene blue, but his whole demeanor seemed somehow… _standoffish_ , starting with the fact Connor hadn't made Sumo immediately vacate the couch to make room for his owner, and Hank spent all this time awkwardly looming over them.

He'd be damned before he was exiled from his own couch, though.

"Move, beast," he ordered the drowsing dog and gave him a shove. Sumo reluctantly moved, basically draping himself over Connor. The android seemed totally unfazed by the development, even though he now had a lapful of a 240-pound dog.

"You alright there, kid? Not squashed or anything?" Hank asked with his eyebrows raised.

"I'm less fragile than I look," Connor retorted, and it came off just this side of sulky. Hank threw him a sideways glance, but Connor wouldn't meet his eyes.

 _Whatever._

Hank squeezed himself into the freed space, determined to relax a little. Soon, however, he noticed an absence of the running commentary the android unusually provided. Mostly it was things like 'you do realize that the statistical probability of this vehicle exploding is actually less than 0.2%, don't you' just when Hank was captivated by a particularly satisfying car chase, and he usually told Connor to shut his trap and enjoy the movie, but now he found the android's silence unnerving. Hank tried to tell himself that this show was just too good for Connor to find any faults with it, but lying to himself had never been his forte.

* * *

 _A/N: If you need to freshen up your memory regarding Helen, go back to chapter 6. And if you're sorry for not being able to witness the Deborah meets Gavin scene, just imagine something like Godzilla vs. King Kong :)._

 _Also, we're nearing the end of Part II, and I'm starting to plot out Part III, which should include at least some events of the android revolution. If you have any suggestions about what characters/scenes you'd like to see, I'd like to hear them!_


	17. Chapter 17

_A/N: So apparently I went and jinxed my own story! When I kept writing notes like 'I'm swamped with work, I don't know whenever I'd find any time to write', I always actually DID manage to find that time and post something. And then I wrote something in the lines of 'now I finally have the time to write as much as I please', and guess what happened? I wrote NOTHING for like a month and a half. Real life happened, and then writer's block. Anyway, here's a chapter, and at least it's long._

* * *

Hank felt they were finally nearing some sort of breakthrough in the serial murder case. The fact they now knew how the murderer communicated with his latest victim – and what this communication was _about_ – made them look for new clues in the warehouse cases, try to find out if he texted those young victims as well. The boys' mobile phones were not located, but they managed to get more information from the father of the older boy, who admitted – with utmost reluctance – that his son had come out to him, they argued and then the son left. And that day was the last time the father had ever seen him alive.

They didn't find anything about the younger boy, who as one of seven children didn't really get that much of his alcoholic parents' attention. Michael Browning's roommates, however, claimed that Michael occasionally brought people over to his room, both girls and boys alike. Hank was starting to see a pattern here.

"Maybe homophobia could be the motive," he told Ben.

"But if the murderer's homophobic, why does he undress them?" Ben countered. "That doesn't make much sense."

"Hell if I know. We're most likely dealing with a psychopath, so logic doesn't have to factor in this," Hank replied. The motive alone, though, did not really narrow the group of possible perpetrators all that much; God knew there were still enough homophobic assholes running around, even in this day and age.

Thankfully, they had another trait of the murderer to work with, confirmed by two witnesses now – the 'Terminator', or 'devil' red eyes. The sleep deprivation clouding Hank's brain when he had talked with Fernanda Herrera had prevented him from puzzling the pieces together right away, but as he was now rereading her testimony, they finally clicked into place.

 _Red eyes. Of course_. Hank had seen such eyes before, not even that long ago. It was time to head to the Nirvana Pub.

…

He didn't step inside the first time he was here, but it turned out the interior décor was just about what he expected; colorful prints of deities with way too many hands, a golden Buddha statuette, batik fabrics, a couple of nazars of varying sizes. A waft of incense tickling Hank's nose didn't help much against the pervasive smell of weed that had stuck to the cushioned chairs.

 _All Beings Under The Sun_ were not only welcomed, but welcomed to get stoned here, apparently.

 _Whatever_. Hank would take potheads over red ice users any day.

"What can I get you?" a woman's voice asked from behind the bar and Hank turned to face her, immediately recognizing the waitress from his first visit to this pub – a petite brunette in her late twenties with tattooed forearms and 'Meghan' written on her name tag, who was looking at him with red and silver eyes.

Hank couldn't say he wasn't tempted by a drink when confronted with her gaze, but reigned himself in.

"I'm here on business," he said, showing Meghan his badge. She nodded, her face barely registering any surprise.

"What do you want to know?" she asked him.

The dark holes around the rim of her pupils were spinning in slow circles, making Hank faintly dizzy. He sent a brief look around, confirming his initial assessment that there were no other customers or staff present yet so he could talk freely, and then focused his attention on the coffee maker behind Meghan.

"Where did you get your eyes?" Hank asked without any preamble, addressing the coffee maker.

"That's private," was Meghan's curt reply.

"Three boys are dead, and one is currently in the hospital, fighting for his life," Hank told her bluntly. "We know next to nothing about the fucker who did it, except for the fact that his eyes are apparently _fucking red_. So consider yourself lucky you don't fit the rest of the profile," Hank growled, and forced himself to look at her again. The circles were fortunately no longer spinning, so he could focus on her face without the fear of getting sick. He probably shouldn't have told her all this, as especially the last piece of information had yet to be released to the public, but he felt like this was the right way to deal with her.

Meghan opened her mouth in shock.

"That's… wrong. The eyes, they're- they're supposed to be used for _protection_ ," she said in a trembling voice.

"You mean, like, spiritual protection?" Hank asked, his eyes roaming over the assortment of good luck charms behind the counter.

"No, actual physical protection," Meghan said, obviously hesitant.

"They what, shoot laser beams to fend off your enemies?" Hank asked in disbelief.

Meghan chuckled, if a little shakily.

"I wish. No, nothing as extravagant as that. They just scan faces and give me information on people I see. If I detect someone with, say, criminal history, I will know to be on my guard," she said, and something in the grim turn of her mouth told Hank that she hadn't chosen to have this _protection_ in face of some hypothetical threat. No, she must have experienced something to make her resort to such a drastic measure.

"Where did you get them?" Hank asked.

"They were given to me by the Healer," the woman replied.

" _The Healer?_ " Hank repeated, unimpressed with this vague, somewhat New Agey moniker. "Who the fuck is that? And more importantly, how do I find him?"

"You don't find him; he finds you," Meghan replied, gracing him with a slightly cryptic smile.

 _Of course he does_ , Hank thought with a wry twist of his lips. After you have awakened your Spiritual Warrior, by saying a prayer to the Sun while dancing naked in a sacred grove or some shit like that.

"Who is he?" he repeated his earlier question.

"An android," Meghan explained curtly.

Hank frowned. He should have expected this, given the ability Meghan's eyes had was commonly found in androids – hell, _Connor_ had it, though Hank had forbidden him from using it on Hank's person – but he didn't like to hear about androids in connection to some spiritual mumbo-jumbo. It reminded him too much of _ra9_ and _I'M ALIVE. And don't forget the creepy statuette in Carlos Ortiz's shower._

"How did you meet him?" Hank rephrased his second question.

Meghan stared into space for a while, chewing on her lower lip. She was obviously weighing how much she was willing to tell him. Her fingers were absently running over the rich floral design of her tattoos. Hank's eyes automatically followed the movement, noticing the image was a little bumpy in places.

 _Self-harm scars_ ,Hank thought with a pang of pity for the girl.

"I was attacked in a park," Meghan finally spoke up, not looking at Hank. "The Healer found me while I was lying there bleeding, and saved my life. I told him that it wasn't the first time something like that happened to me. Told him I just wanted it to stop. And he offered me something that would protect me. These eyes."

"Wouldn't a pepper-spray be enough for that?" Hank couldn't help but ask.

Meghan rewarded him with a bitter smile that made Hank feel like this wasn't the first time she had heard this question.

"I had one when I was attacked. But the attacker, he- looked harmless, and I wasn't on my guard when he jumped me. And then I wasn't fast enough," she said matter-of-factly, in an obvious attempt to distance herself from the memory.

"I'm sorry," Hank murmured.

"It won't happen again. Aside from the scanning, a lot of men find my eyes too disturbing to try anything funny," she said with a wry smile before she turned her back to him and started fiddling with the coffee machine.

Well, Hank couldn't argue with that. Even though by now, Meghan's eyes didn't unsettle him half as much as they had when he saw her first.

A door-bell chimed. A middle-aged couple came in and took a table in the far right corner, under the print of a goddess with about eight hands holding various objects while sitting on a large tiger.

"The rush hour's coming soon. Is there anything else?" Meghan asked Hank over the hissing noises the coffee machine was making as it cleaned itself.

Hank leaned a little over the bar so that she could hear his voice. "Can you tell me anything about that android?"

"I'm sorry. I don't know anything, not even his name. Everyone just calls him the Healer," Meghan said with an apologetic shrug of her shoulders.

"Everyone?" Hank echoed. "Who would that be?"

Meghan grimaced a little, obviously realizing she gave away something she didn't intend to.

"There are… others, with augmentations," she ventured reluctantly. "Some are obviously DIY, some I don't know, but some were helped by the Healer."

"Can you give me their names? Maybe some of them know something," Hank explained.

Meghan shook her head ruefully.

"I cannot break their trust like that."

"Even if there are lives at stake?" Hank pressed on.

"Our lives are at stake, too," she retorted with unexpected vehemence. "We – the augments, that's what we call ourselves – wanted to have legal recognition, not to be regarded as criminals for modifying our bodies. But some of us were arrested. Some people just… disappeared. The government – look, do you even know they cracked down on intelligent prosthetics? Like, they still officially exist, but no insurance would cover them anymore, which makes them basically unaffordable for most people?"

Hank shook his head numbly. He didn't know that.

"The government's official policy is pro-android, but anti-augmentation. In short, we have all these nice robots to help us, but humans ride in the front of the bus and androids in the back, and God forbid they mingle _._ They are afraid that the line's blurring, that if people keep augmenting themselves, they won't be able to tell who's human anymore. Do you understand?"

Hank gave her a slow nod.

Meghan just sagged her shoulders, looking tired.

"It's a gray area. I wish I could help you more, but I'm sorry. I can send a word around, call you if I find something about the Healer," she said in a tone suggesting their conversation was over.

Another customer came in, a young man this time, taking a seat rather close to the bar. The middle-aged couple kept shooting expectant looks in Meghan's direction. Meghan picked up two menus and turned to head out.

Hank reached out to catch her forearm to stop her. He took great pains to keep his touch as brief and business-like as possible. He still felt her tremble slightly while it lasted.

"Look, Meghan," he implored her with urgency. "I don't have much time. That sick fuck is out there, and I'm not sure how it works yet, but the augmentation he's got helps him commit perfect crimes. He didn't leave as much as a hair at any of the crime scenes."

He took a deep breath, and tried to put all of the desperation he felt in his next words.

"I'm just trying to find that murderer. I won't report you or any of your friends. This is your body, and no one – including the government – should have any say in what you do with it."

Meghan froze for a second, her red eyes scanning Hank's expression for any signs of insincerity. When she didn't find any, she spoke up.

"What is that droid to you?"

Hank blinked. This was the last thing he had expected her to say. Because it was blindingly obvious she wasn't talking about the Healer anymore.

"Which one?" he decided to play dumb anyway.

Meghan looked at him with disapproval written into her features. _You know well which one_ , her blood red eyes seemed to say.

Hank sighed. It was none of her business, but she told him things about herself she would have preferred not to share, so it'd be only fair if he repaid the courtesy.

"You mean the one I've been here with," he clarified aloud. Meghan gave him a court nod before speaking up again.

"He's what, your servant? Your boy toy? Your _possession_?"

"No," Hank objected with force. "He's his own person. And I care about him," he added almost as an afterthought, surprising himself a little. He had realized this before, but hearing himself say it was another matter entirely.

Meghan gave him a small smile.

"Thanks for telling me that." She took up a nazar-patterned pen and wrote something on a piece of paper, slipping it across the bar. Then she finally left Hank alone, heading toward the waiting couple.

Hank watched her walk away from him and then halt in her steps.

"Be careful," she addressed him over her shoulder. "I said the government's pro-android right now, but policies change all the time."

…

The first person on Meghan's list took forever to find. If he had a permanent residence, Meghan didn't provide it, scribbling instead "any of the coffee shops around Eastern Market". Hank felt exhausted already just reading that vague description, and he naturally felt much more so when he, in what had to be the tenth or eleventh establishment he visited, finally found his guy, a rat-faced man with a thin beard with no visible augmentations, whose eyes kept nervously darting toward the exit the whole time Hank was talking to him. By the time Hank found his target, he was sure he reeked of weed worse than the entire assembly of the Nirvana Pub's cushioned chairs put together.

The only thing Hank learned for his trouble was the fact that the Healer was an android model MD500 who had previously worked in one of Detroit's hospitals. This was neither unexpected, nor particularly helpful.

He stepped out from the coffee shop to get some much needed fresh air and he was just looking down at Meghan's list, bracing himself for another wild-goose chase, when he got a text from Ben requesting Hank's presence at the station, and promising some good news.

When he got there, Ben informed him that Tom Iwashita had woken from his coma, and was even able to talk to them.

"That's great news actually," Hank said, allowing himself to feel some measure of hope. "So what he did he say about the attacker?"

Ben sighed a little.

"Nothing, unfortunately."

"He's still in shock," Hank shrugged in response. "He might come around with the right kind of help."

His friend frowned.

"Here's the thing. He actually seemed well enough that we sent a specialist in, a child psychologist. But the only thing the kid said was that he already told everything to doctor Wilson. Then Tom's mother burst in, screaming we can't keep her away from her son, and he became completely unresponsive. Couldn't get a word out of him since."

"Fuck," Hank swore. "We should definitely get Child Abuse Unit on her case."

"Already on it," Ben told him.

"Good. So, what does this doctor Wilson have to say?" Hank asked expectantly.

"Here's another thing. There's no doctor Wilson," Ben told him with a complicated expression. "There's not a single member of the staff with that name in the entire hospital. Trust me, we checked."

Hank stared at him in incomprehension at first.

"The boy must've gotten the name wrong," he said after a moment of thought.

"That's what we thought, too. But there's more to this. Hospital rooms are private but the halls are monitored, so we were able to go through recordings of people going in and out of Tom's room," Ben explained.

"And?" Hank prompted him to go on.

"When we showed the recordings to Tom's medical team, they were able to identify everyone expect for one doctor. Or at least, someone who _looked like a doctor_. Wait a sec, I'll show you," Ben told Hank and turned to his terminal.

With a few clicks, a snapshot of a security camera video appeared on his screen. It was a little blurred, but it clearly showed a figure – male, by the looks of it – in green scrubs with its hand on the doorknob.

"He entered the room at 9:14 and left at 9:27. Tom's medical team was in conference at that time, discussing further procedure. There was supposed to be a guard at the door, but he left his post for some reason. We're still looking into that."

"Who the hell is he?" Hank muttered, staring intently at the blurred face, half-hidden behind the green mask.

"We don't know yet. It's probably not the murderer, as he did nothing to harm the kid, but there's definitely something fishy going on here. Jeffrey decided to release this photo to the media, to see if anyone can identify him," Ben said. "I'm gonna grab a coffee, do you want some?"

Hank nodded mechanically, his eyes still glued to the picture. There was something about the figure that seemed strangely familiar to him. Was it the posture? Or the eyes? No, they were barely visible. It was something else, but Hank couldn't quite put his finger on it.

And then it dawned on him. _The hands_ _on the doorknob._ Hank knew those hands. Even when looking at this grainy, pixelated picture, he could almost feel their cool touch on his skin.

 _Jeffrey decided to release this photo to the media,_ Ben's voice echoed in his ears, and Hank felt cold panic well up inside of him.

…

"Hello, Hank," Connor said without turning around when Hank entered the kitchen, seemingly absorbed by what he was doing at the counter. Chopping onions, by the looks of it.

"What the fuck you think you're doing?" Hank bellowed. During the ride home, he somehow managed to transform his panic to seething anger, because that was how he usually dealt with things.

Connor carefully laid his knife on the countertop and finally turned to face Hank.

"A chicken casserole," he said mildly. "But if you want something else for dinner, it can be arranged."

Hank felt like he was going to pop a vein in face of such nonchalance.

"Stop playing coy with me, Connor," he gritted through his teeth. "Dr. Wilson, really? Why not go straight for Dr. House?"

"I find Dr. Wilson easier to relate to," Connor answered, and Hank couldn't say he was surprised that Connor picked up what was probably the nicest character on the show, always putting up with his friend's shit. _But Connor's TV preferences were beside the point now._

"I told you not to interfere with the investigation," he snapped. He expected Connor to deny it, to try to defeat Hank with semantics of how Hank didn't _expressly_ forbid him from doing something like this, but Connor didn't bother to say anything in his defense, just watching Hank with cool assessing gaze.

Hank felt his anger mounting up.

"I thought I made myself clear that I didn't want you to be a part of this. You. Are. Not. Qualified. For police investigation. Connor," Hank said pointedly, not going as far as to mention for what exactly Connor was qualified, but feeling the unsaid words hang between them nonetheless.

Connor frowned and looked like he wanted to argue with this, but refrained in the last moment. Hank went on:

"When I thought you were just mucking around my computer, reading reports, putting clues together, I thought what the hell, but it wasn't like you were doing any harm, so I let it slide. But this goddamn stunt you pulled – do you realize everything wrong with that? How you jeopardized the investigation and my job? And most importantly – _your own life_?" Hank felt his voice raise a notch.

"I just talked to Tom, that's all," Connor objected calmly.

"You just-" Hank had to take a few breaths to compose himself, so he could produce anything coherent. "You waltzed in that hospital in a _disguise_ , did something to _distract the guard_ – no, don't tell me what you did, I don't even wanna know – and then you had a chat with a _victim of an attempted homicide who had just woken from a coma_. No big deal, huh? You 'just talked to Tom'," Hank said in a high-pitched parody of Connor's voice. Then his expression became more solemn.

"Why, Connor? Why did you do all of this? And don't give me that crap about unused capacities."

"I wanted-" Connor started, then abruptly cut himself off.

 _Androids cannot want things,_ played through Hank's mind.

"It's in my programing to be helpful to humans. I saw an opportunity to provide my help and used it," the android said after a beat of silence.

Hank wanted to break something when he heard this. He took another few breaths to get himself under control, but it wasn't helping this time. He went to retrieve a bourbon bottle and a glass, feeling the weight of Connor's disapproving gaze on him.

 _See if I care, Mr. Programmed-To-Help-Humans_ , Hank thought viciously as he finally sat down at the table and poured himself two inches of the golden liquid.

"Whatever you say," he growled after he gulped the alcohol down. "You're grounded, Connor. You can walk Sumo, but don't leave the house otherwise, got it?"

The android gave him a terse nod.

"Great. Now come here and tell me what you learned from the kid, because apparently you're the only one he actually spoke to," he told Connor in a disgruntled voice.

Connor opened his mouth to say something, but at the same time Hank's phone started to vibrate. He made a gesture signaling for the android to wait, and took the call.

"Are you watching it, Hank?" Fowler's voice asked him.

"Watching what?"

"Switch to Channel 16," the Police Chief commanded.

Hank walked to the living room to turn on his TV with a feeling of dread sinking like a stone down his stomach. He was absolutely sure that whatever this was, it couldn't be anything good. He reached for the remote, dimly aware of Connor's soft footsteps following him from the kitchen.

Instead of the usual news anchor, the screen showed an unknown android with his synthetic skin removed, revealing the smooth white chassis underneath.

"-demand that humans recognize androids as a living species and each android as a person in their own right," the android was saying in a soothing, yet determined voice.

"Shit," Hank cursed under his breath.

"Indeed," Fowler's voice concurred from the phone Hank forgot he was holding next to his ear. "Now get to the Stratford Tower before the feds steal your case from under your ass."

"Together, we can live in peace and build a better future, for humans and androids," the white-faced android kept talking, but all Hank heard was _revolution_ and _civil war_ and _bloodshed_ , because that was how those things always went. Everything until now had been leading up to this, but he still didn't see it, or he rather didn't _want_ to see it.

He lowered his hand, feeling completely numb. Then he went to the hall and started to mechanically put on the coat he had only just left there.

"Please be careful," Connor said quietly from behind him, reminding Hank of Meghan. The android reached out to hold one of Hank's hands.

Hank turned to face him and saw that the android's brows were pinched together in worry.

 _That's rich, coming from you_ , he wanted to say. _You just pulled the stupidest stunt in the history of stupid stunts and now you're telling me to be careful?_

But in the end, Hank didn't say anything. He just gave Connor's hand a reassuring squeeze and left the house.

…

When Hank reached the Stratford Tower, it turned out he was already too late. Feds stole his case already. Hank learned this from a smallish, dark-haired man by the name of Perkins, who seemed to be only too happy to tell Hank the Bureau had taken over.

"You were unsuited for the task anyway," Perkins said condescendingly **. "** I have it on good information that you're fraternizing with the enemy. Your relationship with your domestic android is… unusual, to say the least."

For a moment, Hank could do nothing but stare at this man. Both uniformed and plain clothes officers were rushing past them in the search of the androids who had taken over the Tower just moments ago. No one was paying any attention to the two of them, standing right in the middle of the hall.

It seemed completely surreal.

"We don't need you here," Perkins said with a mocking twist of his thin lips and moved to walk past Hank. "You android-fucking faggot," the odious little man whispered when he passed him.

Hank's right hand formed a hook and met with Perkin's jaw. Next thing he knew, three uniformed cops had to tear him away from Perkins to stop him from beating the crap out of the man while the son of the bitch yelled something about a broken nose and having Hank's badge.

Hank was, of course, suspended for the rest of the day. But that was a very small price to pay compared to the satisfaction he felt when he erased that smug smile off that fucker's face. He wished Gavin was around to see this; he of all people would understand.

…

Unbeknownst to Hank, Gavin Reed was, at that very moment, engaged in a conversation with a stranger who asked him to meet him at the Jimmy's Bar, a rather seedy place for Gavin's tastes. Hank Anderson's favorite joint, if his memory served him well.

 _Figures_.

"Remind me again why I'm even listening to you," he growled. This guy picked what had to be the worst possible timing, at the brink of something that threatened to become a human-android civil war. It wasn't like the serial murders they were investigating now took the backseat or something, but couldn't this guy just come to the station with his info like a normal person to save everyone's time and energy? Now just wasn't the time to play games like this, that's what Gavin was thinking.

Yet there was something about the man's voice when he had spoken to Gavin over the phone that made him agree to this noir movie-like meeting.

"Because I am your best shot at solving this case," the man repeated patiently.

"So you keep saying. How much do you want for the information?" Gavin asked.

"As I said before, my price is just taking part in the operation, nothing else," the man replied.

Gavin frowned, feeling skeptical. The fact that the man wore a hood that hid like half of his face certainly did little to gain his trust.

"What's in it for you? You get off on danger or what?"

"Does it matter? Let's say I've got a personal interest in seeing this case closed," the man explained, idly tracing the contours of his glass with his fingers.

Gavin snorted.

"Well, you can stuff that, because there's no way we'd let a civilian be a part of our op. We've got people who are _trained_ for this, you know? Like, professionals. So how about you feed me your info like a good law-abiding citizen and then sit on your ass and let us do our fucking jobs," Gavin said, his words coming out a little more condescending than he planned, given that he _did_ need that info.

"I highly doubt you've got anyone who'd fit the profile as well as I do," the stranger objected. "Moreover, none of you are… expendable," he finished quietly, his eyes fixed at something at the distance.

"Huh?" Gavin voiced in incomprehension.

The man raised his hands and pulled his hood down, revealing his face.

 _Oh no. Not this shit again,_ Gavin thought helplessly at the sight of the blue diode on the man's temple.

"Fuck me sideways," he swore aloud.

"Sorry, but that's not part of the offer," Connor replied with a wry smile on his lips. "So, do we have a deal, Detective Reed?"

* * *

 _A/N: I've got a conference next week, so no writing until then. After that – no promises (I learned my lesson) but let's say I'd like to finish at least this Arc ASAP, it's only one chapter to go._


	18. Chapter 18

_A/N: The last chapter of Part II, here we go._

* * *

When Hank came to the station the next morning, he found out that 'suspended for the rest of the day' had been changed into 'suspended indefinitely'.

"You think now's the time for leaving me on the bench, Jeffrey?" he asked Fowler with his eyebrows raised after he'd been summoned to the Chief's office to receive the news.

Fowler's lips twisted into an unhappy frown.

"Believe me or not, but I don't really have a say in this. You pissed the wrong guy this time, Hank, one that knows how to throw his weight around. He's best buddies with Homeland Security, and he apparently made them think that you might be a threat."

"That filthy bastard," Hank swore.

Fowler sighed, suddenly looking all his years and then some.

"As you said, this might be the worst possible timing, but there's nothing I can do. You also got yourself a disciplinary hearing, which is what we're doing right now, for the record. I'm supposed to be asking you what on Earth possessed you to attack a federal agent, so please enlighten me," the Chief said with his arms crossed while regarding Hank with an expectant air.

"He said some shit," Hank muttered.

"You mean he goaded you with-" Fowler spoke up with a meaningful look, his hand drawing an open arch in the air in a gesture inviting Hank to finish his sentence.

"-offensive remarks of a highly personal nature, yeah, you can put it in the report like that," Hank took the Chief's hint while rolling his eyes. _Like anyone ever read those._

"What exactly did he say, Hank?" Fowler asked him in a more serious tone. "I won't write it down."

"I know you won't, it's just- there's no point in repeating it, okay?" Hank snapped irritably. Damn Jeffrey and his nosiness.

The Chief watched him in silence for a moment.

"Wouldn't it by any chance have anything to do with your… special android friend?" he ventured eventually.

Hank groaned. He kind of hoped Fowler had forgotten all about the 'birthday surprise sexbot' incident, but his old friend had not only remembered, but was able to connect the dots with everything else that had been going on with Hank.

Well, they didn't make him Police Chief for his sunny disposition, that was for sure.

"No comment," Hank mumbled disgruntledly.

"If there ever was a time less fitting for a robo romance…" Fowler started, as if Hank needed a reminder.

"I get the feds are on the android case, but can't you let me finish the Hummingbird? Off the record, at least?" Hank abruptly changed the topic.

Fowler sighed.

"I really can't. Gavin's in charge of that case now, and that's final. All I can tell you is that some new evidence turned up, and we're this close to catching the motherfucker. Don't worry, we've got this."

When Hank didn't say anything to that and just stared at him, Fowler cleared his throat and went on:

"Look, Hank, everyone appreciates your work on this case. You'll get the due credit when it's over and done with."

"Screw your credit," Hank growled. "I wanted to put the cuffs on that motherfucker myself, don't you understand that, Jeffrey?"

Fowler ran a hand over his face.

"Trust me, I do," he said resignedly. "But you need to lie low for a while, Hank. It took all I've got to even keep you on the force. You really made an enemy out of the wrong son of a bitch this time. Not that I think that punch wasn't well deserved. But for now, just go home and take some time off, God knows you need it. And that's an order," were Fowler's parting words before he made Hank surrender his badge and weapon.

…

Hank, of course, completely ignored the Chief's order. He wouldn't lose this case because of some FBI asshole who just begged to have his nose broken; for the first time in years, he was motivated enough to solve this and catch the perp at all cost. He would not let anyone take this away from him.

He still had Meghan's list, which he hadn't entered into official evidence as that would endanger Meghan and her friends. He decided to continue searching for the Healer on his own.

Over the course of the next few hours, he visited more seedy bars and pubs, squats and weathered wharf boats than he could count, managing to find three different people from the list. The first two didn't show any visible signs of augmentation, but the third one more than made up for it by sporting a pair of motherfucking artificial _wings_ , all sleek black feathers with a beautiful golden lining.

Unfortunately, none of them had any information whatsoever on the Healer. The modern-day Icarus, who surprisingly wasn't a youngster but a slightly ragged looking dark-haired man well into his forties, offered Hank a cigarette when he saw his disappointment.

"You look like you need it, bro," he said and lit the cigarette for Hank before disappearing somewhere in the maze of the wharf.

Hank leaned against the pier, and a gust of icy wind almost whipped the cigarette away from his fingers. He let his eyes roam over the grey, billowing expanse of water, contemplating his next course of action.

The list didn't seem to take him anywhere; there were few names left still, but it was freezing and his body was aching already from this futile pursuit. He really wished he had not been officially recalled from the investigation so that other options would've been still open for him. Taking the last drag of the winged-man's cigarette, Hank suddenly remembered something Fowler had said.

'Some new evidence turned up', were his exact words. It could be anything, of course, but Hank immediately thought of Connor's visit to the hospital. The android must have learned something from the boy, Hank was sure of that.

But why would Connor give his information to anyone other than Hank? Especially since he knew that Hank was in charge of this investigation and desperately wanted to catch the perpetrator. It didn't make any sense.

No, what probably happened was that Tom Iwashita recovered from his shock and spoke again, repeating what he had initially told Connor to the police.

Anyhow, Hank resolved to call it a day and raise this topic with Connor again when he got home, to be able to finally pour his energies into something other than searching for the elusive Healer, which he had been already thoroughly fed up with.

When he came home, Connor was nowhere to be seen, unlike Sumo who had jumped him as enthusiastically as though he hadn't seen his owner for days instead of mere hours. When the dog finally quieted down a little, Hank was able to catch the sound of guitar playing coming from the guest bedroom.

Hank found it a little unusual that Sumo wasn't in the room with Connor, as the dog was very sociable. All that guitar playing must have gotten on his nerves, considering Connor had been playing already when Hank left the house. Hank had to admit, though, that it didn't sound half that bad anymore. _In fact_ … he frowned. It actually sounded almost _professional_.

Now, some people wouldn't consider it strange, as they thought androids could get programs that'd provide them with any kind of skill instantly, and it was surely a source of jealousy and resentment for a lot of them. Hank didn't know if anything like that was even possible with music, but Connor had been definitely learning the human way and even though he had much more time and energy to practice than a regular human would, he was still far from mastering the instrument. Which meant the music Hank was hearing at this moment didn't really sound like anything Connor should've been able to pull off.

Hank opened the door to the guest bedroom without bothering to knock. His suspicion was confirmed when he found an mp3 player connected to speakers playing a guitar solo recording just loud enough to create the impression of the player being in the room.

"Sonofabitch," he swore aloud. He immediately understood what this was – a decoy. He cursed himself for not checking up on Connor in the morning in his hurry to get to work, so he couldn't be sure whether Connor had been in the house at that time.

He had no time to puzzle over this, however, as he was dead sure Connor was out there doing something very, very stupid. Probably even worse than his hospital adventure.

He tried calling the android, but predictably got the dial tone. He moved on to Jeffrey, Ben, Chris and finally Gavin, but none of them picked up. Then he tried to reach them by calling the station, but he was told that he was not authorized to talk to any of them by the android receptionist. Last thing he could think of was accessing his work terminal remotely, only to be greeted with a big red message spelling ACCESS DENIED.

 _What the fuck was going on here?_

A sense of foreboding made his hands shake, cold sweat dripping between his fingers. He wiped his hands against the fabric of his pants and then gripped the kitchen tabletop to get the tremors under control. He was able to deal with crisis situations; hell, it was his fucking _job_. He forced himself to think some more, to make sense of the chaotic jumble of panicked thoughts whirling inside his head.

 _How does one find a missing android?_ Feeling like he was running out of both ideas and time, Hank entered that very same phrase into the search engine of his computer. The first result took him to the CyberLife homepage, to the section called "Have you misplaced your android?"

Hank had to snort at the wording, which suggested androids could be _misplaced_ , like a house-key or a pair of socks, but clicked on the section anyway.

It contained a single input box inviting him to ENTER MODEL AND SERIAL NUMBER HERE, and Hank swore under his breath. He only now realized that he _didn't know any of those things_. He was the most irresponsible android owner ever – not that he felt like he owned Connor, but he was definitely responsible for him of ways, and this was basic information he should have known.

He felt absolutely wretched, but he knew this was not the time to wallow in self-loathing. There'd be plenty of that later, Hank was sure. Now, he had to think of another way to find out Connor's whereabouts, and quick.

Hank pressed his hands against his forehead. He already felt like he exhausted all of his options. God knew when exactly Connor left the house and what the hell he was doing. He could be in a real danger, especially now on the brink of an android revolution. For all Hank knew, _Connor could already be-_

He was assaulted by a vivid memory of Michael Browning's lifeless body, the one that had reminded him of Connor so much, and felt his breathing pick up, threatening to develop into a full-blown panic attack.

The tremors in his hands were getting worse and his head started to feel dangerously light.

Hank considered having a drink, but quickly decided against it – he might get into a situation where he would not be able to afford not being sober. Instead, he went into his bedroom and rummaged about in a drawer of his bedside table. He managed to find some Xanax and swallowed two of the little pink pills. He used to take a lot of those, but stopped because they didn't make him numb enough, unlike alcohol.

Right now, however, it was exactly what he needed, because in a few minutes the panic subsided and his breathing evened out. He was able to think again and his hands no longer shook, even though his thoughts were just a little sluggish because of the drug.

 _How to find a missing android,_ he repeated the question. As he couldn't use the usual method for locating androids, which involved the serial number he didn't know, it'd be the same as looking for a missing human. And when one looked for a missing human, they did what? Tried to reach them on the phone, was the first thing that came to Hank's mind, which he had attempted already.

He repeated calling Connor and the DPD detectives at this stage, but the results were the same.

 _Okay, someone's missing and not answering their phone, so what do you do next?_

 _Report it to the police,_ was the obvious answer, which didn't really help. If the police was not an option, then… the next step was to contact their family and friends. Naturally, Connor had no family, and as for friends, there was no one but – _Helen_ , Hank realized with a jolt. He should try contacting his former dog-walker. It was a long shot, but he might as well give it a try.

Helen picked up on the first ring.

"I'm so glad you called, Hank," she said immediately with obvious relief. "Connor told me you might ask me where he went. He also said that by the time you'd call me, I might just as well tell you as it'd be too late for you to stop him. Truth to be told, I've been considering calling you for a while 'cos I'm kinda worried 'bout him. He seemed-"

"Where's Connor?" Hank impatiently interrupted her nervous rambling.

Helen promptly proceeded to give him an address that Hank recognized as being located in an area popular with youngsters due to its high density of clubs and discos. He was in the car before she even finished talking.

…

It had begun to snow by the time he reached the place where Helen sent him to, tiny snowflakes sparkling in front of a gaudy neon sign that spelled _Twinkle Lounge_. The interior décor turned to be just as loud, complete with spinning disco-balls, rainbow patterns and glitter on _everything_. Hank feared that he'd be sparklier than those pansy-ass vampires from Twilight before he got out of here.

The visitors seemed very young, mostly in their early twenties or even younger. Hank wondered how this establishment was even legal, as some kids here looked not a day over fifteen. He saw more boys than girls, and there were some individuals whose gender he couldn't even begin to guess.

There were people who looked like band members or anime characters; if there were augments there, Hank would be never able to tell.

Most of these people were moving to the ear-piercingly loud bass-heavy music in a jostling jumble of bodies on the dance floor, but some were also sitting in pairs, leaning their heads together over little rainbow-patterned tables while sipping from colorful drinks.

Had there been no other factors at play, Hank might've thought that Connor was propelled to come here by his original programming, unsatisfied that Hank didn't let the android provide him with any sexual favors. However, the fact that Connor informed Helen about this spoke against it; if getting off was all the android was after, he wouldn't need to use his friend as a backup.

Hank dived into the lively crowd and made his way to the bar, finding himself an object of scrutiny as he did so. Some stares were merely puzzled, wondering what someone like him was doing in a place like this, but in the eyes of few older men who appeared to be in their late twenties or thirties he caught a glimpse of something that looked like _interest._

Hank snorted. The last thing he needed right now was to become a walking bear-trap for horny twinks.

The barman was a twenty-something punk with his hair styled into bright pink spikes who used more eye-shadow than any of Hank's girlfriends ever did.

"We don't serve alcohol here," he told Hank after being asked for a beer.

 _Well, that explained a lot._ There was no way a place that attracted as many minors would slip under the police radar if it sold booze.

"Then I'll have some coke. That's some awfully young crowd you've got here," Hank commented. The barman's lips twitched in an obvious displeasure.

"Look, if your kid's here and you came to drag them away by the ear to save their immortal soul or whatever-" he started to say, but Hank interrupted him.

"Do I look like some fucking bigot to you?" he growled, glaring at the presumptuous little prick.

"Sorry man," the barman said with an apologetic shrug. "It's just when parents come here, it's usually for this reason, and you look like a parent."

"I'm not," Hank said curtly. _Not anymore,_ he didn't add aloud. Even now, this reminder hurt like bitch. But he was trying to find Connor, who might be in danger, and he had to focus on that.

"I'm here for my boyfriend actually," Hank said aloud, earning a raised eyebrow from the pink-haired man. He proceeded to show him the only picture of Connor he had saved on his phone, one from over a month ago he snapped on impulse when Connor had been trying to teach Sumo to fetch a ball, which showed the android dangling a dog treat in front of the Saint Bernard's gaping maw with a delightfully wicked expression.

"This guy. Have you seen him? We fought, and he ran off here. He's a little bit unstable, and I'm afraid he might do something stupid," Hank said carefully.

The last thing, at least, was true, and it was also what was most important right now.

"Sorry man, but you're a bit late. I think I saw your boyfriend leave with some guy like, twenty minutes ago," the barman replied.

"Where did they go?" Hank couldn't hold back the question even though he knew he'd hardly get any answer to that.

The barman gave him a pitying look.

"Dunno, man. Considering how these things usually go, there's a lil' park not that far away, but it's kinda cold for that, so I'd try a love hotel if I were you. There are a few of those around," he told Hank and then provided directions to each of them.

Hank thanked him and left the young man with a generous tip before hurrying into the night, where the light snowing from before was now threatening to turn into a blizzard.

…

The receptionists in the first two love hotels told Hank flat away they hadn't seen anyone like the man in the picture tonight. In the third one, a dingy little place called the Mojave Motel, which had yellow walls and thin faded beige carpets laid in its halls and stank of fried fish and disinfectant, Hank approached a woman in her fifties with dark circles around her eyes and a bad blond dye job on her curly hair, who told Hank she had no idea.

"I'm not that great with them folks' faces," she added before she resumed what she had been doing before, which was watching some soap opera on the little screen of her work terminal. Hank could smell cheap rum on her breath.

"Look, he might be with someone really dangerous. It's a matter of life and death," Hank pressed her, but the woman turned her head to give him an unimpressed stare.

"It always is, hun," she said flatly before going back to her soap. Hank breathed in the stale, foul-smelling air and let despair wash over him like dark cold water.

Before he could succumb to it fully, however, there was a sound announcing he got a message on his phone. His heart started to beat faster when he saw that it was from Connor.

Hank opened it and found out it contained nothing but a set of GPS coordinates. When he fed them to his map app, there was a little ping and a woman's voice told him he had reached his destination.

"What was the last room you rented?" Hank barked at the receptionist.

"That's none of your business," she snapped at him waspishly, annoyed he wouldn't leave her to watch her show in peace. "Now get the hell outa here before I call the police."

"I'm the fucking police!" Hank bellowed.

"Why dint ya say so?" the woman grumbled and gave him a room key, thankfully without demanding to see Hank's identification.

"It's the last room down the hall," she added as Hank broke into a run.

…

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Hank registered that the room he just barged into was a shabby affair whose only furniture was a king-sized bed that had seen better times, two chipped end-tables and a tiny fridge stuffed with overpriced drinks.

At the present moment, however, these findings were completely overshadowed by two other things. The first was that the window was wide open with snow piling under it, and the room was as cold as the night outside.

The second, by far the most important one, was that there was a figure lying just a few feet in front of said window, a figure with its upper body exposed.

Even though the only illumination in the room were the weak flickering neon lights coming from the sign on the wall outside, Hank recognized Connor right away.

He also saw there was a gashing wound on the left side of the android's chest, and there was a pool of blue liquid growing around him. The android was trying to cover up the wound with his hand, but more and more thirium kept escaping through his fingers.

"I'm sorry, Hank," was the first thing Connor told him while trying to lift himself from the ground with his other hand. "The murderer escaped, it was all for nothing. I wanted to use the pepper spray but he was faster-"

"Don't move, you're hurt," Hank interrupted him, not really listening to anything Connor had said. He urged the android to lie back down, supporting his head while Connor obliged him. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Don't worry," Connor replied immediately. "I'm running a diagnostic right now. I'll identify the problem and initiate the self-repair protocol," he said. He was obviously trying to sound convincing, but this was belied by the static sounds garbling his words. Hank also noticed Connor was shivering badly, and took off his own jacket to cover him. Then he took Connor's uncovered hand between the two of his, trying to rub some heat into the android's cold fingers.

"Why the hell did you do this on your own?" Hank asked, not caring to keep the betrayal he felt from seeping into his voice.

"But I didn't," Connor protested, his voice getting alarmingly weaker. "I had… backup. Detective Reed… and others… they were at the club but they were… recalled."

Hank frowned. He didn't understand what this was about, but what concerned him more was that Connor's breathing was becoming labored, and speaking seemed harder and harder for the android.

He shouldn't be asking any questions, now simply wasn't the time for that. Only, he couldn't think of anything else he could do and all those _whys_ were fighting to spill from his lips.

"Why did you do this, Connor?" he asked.

"This case, it… was making you sad. I don't want you… to be… sad," Connor croaked.

Hank found he couldn't breathe for a moment.

"You. Are such an idiot," he finally managed to rasp. "Dumbest son of a bitch I know," he murmured, tenderly cradling Connor's head to his chest and pressing his lips to the android's forehead.

Connor's breathing quieted a little, but Hank's jacket was now soaking with his blood and he didn't seem to be getting any better.

"How's that diagnostics coming along?" Hank asked, sick with worry.

Connor's soft brown eyes looked up to him. Through the open window, the wind was blowing snow directly on the two of them and there were crystals of snow on Connor's eyelashes, just like on that day when they walked to the Ambassador Bridge. The look he was giving Hank now, though, seemed infinitely sadder.

"I'm sorry, Hank. There's a critical… component… failure. I can shut down… any minute now," he said quietly.

"Let's just get you to CyberLife, I'll give them anything just to keep you alive. Just hang in there," Hank exclaimed, ready to spring to his feet, but Connor stopped him by giving his hand a weak tug.

"You can't… take me there," he whispered.

"But-" Hank started to protest. Connor silenced him by lifting his hand and softly tapping Hank's lips with his index finger, the touch startlingly cold.

"They'd probably… decommission me, or… reset me. I'd rather die as… myself than… live as a machine," he said softly, but with a finality that sent chills down Hank's spine.

"I can – I can try to repair you, just tell me what to do," Hank pleaded, his voice cracking.

Connor just shook his head, and that simple movement seemed to drain up all of his remaining energy.

"I'm sorry, Hank. I wish… we had… more time together. I wanted…"

Connor's lips froze mid-movement and the hand in Hank's grasp went limp.

 _Nononono,_ ran through Hank's head as he screamed at Connor to wake up while shaking him by the shoulders, all the while knowing it was futile.

 _Emotions always screw everything up_ , Hank thought as he tried to muffle the loud, inhuman sobs escaping from his mouth with his fist.

…

Hank didn't know whether it was minutes or days that passed while he was sitting in the freezing room with his tears dripping down on Connor's closed eyelids. He couldn't bring himself to care.

He just stared at the snowflakes dancing in chaotic patterns in the blue and pink neon lights, his mind empty and frozen like the Arctic Desert.

"Please make way," a deep voice suddenly said from somewhere behind him. Hank turned towards it, dazedly blinking through the tears.

At first he didn't understand what exactly he was seeing because he was blinded by all the white. After a moment, his eyes recognized the white oval as a face, and the rest as a white body wearing white clothes.

It was an android with his synthetic skin off dressed all in white. There was a deep crack running right through the middle of his naked face, as though something – or someone – had tried to break it into two.

"Please make way so I can help him," the voice repeated patiently, and Hank numbly let go of Connor's hand and moved aside.

The android placed his hands on the gaping wound in Connor's chest. Hank half expected some otherworldly light to spring from his plastic fingers, but the android just held his hands there for a few seconds and then reached for something beside him.

It was a big leather bag. A doctor's bag. Hank finally understood.

"You're… the Healer?" he asked incredulously.

 _You don't find him; he finds you,_ Meghan's voice echoed in his ears.

The android gave him a single nod.

"Your friend's thirium regulator got damaged beyond repair, but I'll try to exchange it. There is still hope for him," he told Hank.

"You're gonna exchange his… heart?" Hank whispered in awe.

The Healer gave him another nod and opened his bag.

Hank closed his eyes and dared to hope.

* * *

 _A/N: The second part's now officially over! There'll be a third and final part called "You Didn't Even Notice When the Sky Turned Blue" addressing the android revolution and its impact on Connor and Hank, but I need some time to plot it out first.  
I am, as always, looking very much forward to your comments, they are my inspiration. _


	19. Chapter 19

**Part III - And You Didn't Even Notice That the Sky Turned Blue**

"Can you please try to keep your eyes on the road, Hank?" Connor asked mildly.

Hank forced himself to tear his eyes off Connor's face, the sight of which he had been drinking in hungrily. He still couldn't quite believe that the android was sitting there beside him. Moreover, he looked almost normal except for the bag of thirium in his hands connected to a tube that disappeared somewhere underneath Hank's jacket, which looked positively huge on the android.

The bag had been the Healer's parting gift; before he left them, he told them Connor had to replenish his blood loss as soon as possible to facilitate tissue regeneration. Hank didn't get to ask him any questions regarding the Hummingbird. As soon as Connor opened his eyes after the successful thirium pump exchange, the Healer said his goodbyes, and Hank didn't even think of stopping him.

Hank's mind kept returning to those horrible moments before that, to the time he spent in that shabby love hotel room thinking Connor was dead _._ He commanded himself to snap out of it and refocus on the road. Connor was right, of course. It would be really stupid for the android to survive being stabbed in the heart only to be killed in an accident caused by Hank's reckless driving.

Not many cars passed them in the opposite lanes, but quite a few were headed the same way as they were, which was coincidentally out of the city and in the direction of the Canadian border.

It didn't seem likely that this many people were out partying on a weekday night, plus Hank spotted not a small number of families with children among the cars that overtook them. It was kind of unusual that these people were out driving at this hour in the first place, let alone that they were exceeding the speed limit en masse.

Was there any national holiday Hank forgot about? That still wouldn't explain the speeding, though.

Soon there was actually little need for Hank to keep his eyes on the road as the traffic in their lane became so heavy that they got into a traffic jam, moving forward in a torturously sluggish pace.

Then it hit him _. The android revolution._ Had it started in earnest and people were evacuating because of that?

He reached out to turn on the radio.

"…are considering putting Detroit under curfew because of the android attacks," a female news presenter was announcing, confirming Hank's suspicion. "All five CyberLife stores were targeted within an hour. No humans were harmed during the attacks, but President Warren has called in the armed forces to deal with the threat. This decision has been met with general public approval, especially with regards to the series of unresolved murders, where an android perpetrator is strongly suspected by the Detroit police."

Hank turned off the radio, fuming. Fucking media, twisting everything. Until yesterday, he himself had been in charge of that very investigation and he had never released any statements of the sort.

"We should keep it on, to stay informed. I tried to go online earlier, but it's not working," Connor told him.

"Sorry, I couldn't listen to that bullshit. Gimme a moment," Hank growled, clenching his hands on the stirring-wheel in frustration.

He knew he couldn't afford to be angry right now as it did little to improve their situation. But being stuck in a traffic jam like this made him finally feel the bone-crushing exhaustion that always came after shock, and irritability was the first sign of that.

They came to the point where they hadn't moved an inch for longer than twenty minutes. People were definitely fleeing the city, fearing their lives were in danger because of the rebelling androids.

Hank looked back to Connor, noticing that the hand not holding the bag of blue liquid was clenched in a fist, and his face wore a tense expression. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like frustration was the cause in this case, as the android also looked paler than usual and his brows were pinched together in a way that suggested he was in pain.

"Are you alright?" Hank asked worriedly.

"The vertical position is not very good for cellular restoration," Connor replied in a strained voice.

"You mean you should lie down," Hank translated it for himself.

"Quite," Connor nodded with a pained grimace.

"Shit," Hank swore under his breath as he overlooked the unmoving row of cars in front of them. They'd have to wait this out. He was just about to suggest that Connor climb in the back and lie down in there, when he noticed that something was going on in front of them; he could see red and blue lights coloring the road ahead.

He rolled down his window and stuck his head out in the freezing night, trying to assess the situation. A traffic accident, maybe? It'd be no wonder in the current circumstances, as there were bound to be some inexperienced drivers among the speeding cars, and yet others – or in the worst case scenario, the very same – might succumb to panic.

The vehicle whose lights Hank saw earlier came through the emergency lane, and he found out it belonged to the FBI. It stopped next to the car standing right in front of them, an autonomous family model. A large, non-descript black van followed in its tracks.

One agent in a black uniform walked around the car, made the driver put down their window and shouted something at them, while another one waited by the FBI vehicle.

The first agent took something through the window from the driver. Hank had to strain his eyes a little to see what it was, but eventually realized those were ID documents.

The agent seemed dissatisfied with what he received, pointing at the back of the car with some sort of question. The answer made him frown and draw his gun. In the next moment, a woman exited the back of the car with her hands over her head while the agent aimed his weapon at her.

"Go to the van!" he yelled at her. She looked like she was going to break down in tears, but obeyed, approaching the van with faltering steps. Suddenly, the right back door of the car opened and a boy no older than seven clambered out of the vehicle, running after the woman.

Another woman jumped out of the car and forcibly dragged the boy back, while the child kept kicking and screaming something that sounded like "Katie".

The woman approaching the van turned back, teary-eyed. When he saw her face from this angle, Hank noticed there was a red blinking light on her temple. The agent nudged the female android with his gun, forcing her to take the few last steps. Then she was pushed inside the black van.

This whole scene made Hank's stomach feel sick.

"She's an AX400. Domestic and childcare model," Connor said quietly.

Hank somehow doubted this particular android committed any sort of crime. No; it looked like she was picked up on the sole basis she was an android, which might mean that the FBI was rounding up all androids and taking them away somewhere.

Hank didn't like this one bit. It was clear their car was going to be checked next, and even though Connor had previously removed his LED diode, there was no way they could cover up what he really was, not with the thirium bag that couldn't be disconnected.

There was now almost no traffic in the lanes for cars heading the opposite direction, which were not separated in any way in this section of the road.

Hank made a split-second decision and drove right in there. Almost immediately, the FBI vehicle started to tail them, its blue and red light bar flashing angrily into the night.

"Hank, I don't think this is a good idea," Connor told him and even though Hank wasn't looking at the android right now, he was sure he had a worried crease between his brows. "If we get caught-"

"We won't," Hank replied with a calm he didn't feel. "You know why I drive this old car, Connor? 'Cause it has no integrated speed limits like those dumb toys," he said and sped up, going well over 100 miles an hour.

The police vehicle, of course, wasn't subject to the limits he mentioned, as that would kind of beat its purpose, but it still struggled to keep up as Hank dashed through the empty lane. There was an overpass on the left, naturally meant for entering the highway and not leaving it. Hank had no choice but go for it, praying there'd be no vehicles on it as it was only one lane wide.

"Watch out!" Connor shouted. There was a truck coming at them. Hank veered to the right and managed to slide past it. In its own attempt to avoid them, the truck abruptly swerved to the side, partly blocking the road. The FBI vehicle crashed right into it.

"Hell yeah," Hank exclaimed in glee. He should probably feel bad about the feds in the crashed car, who were only doing their jobs, but right now, he was simply happy they managed to escape them and the sinister black van.

However, a glance at Connor considerably curbed his excitement. The android's eyes were tightly shut and he was clutching his thirium bag for dear life.

"Hold on, I'll get us home soon," Hank promised him. Luckily, their maneuver brought them quite close to home, and unlike the highway, the roads in Hank's neighborhood were practically deserted. The ride to his house took but a few minutes.

The moment they arrived, Hank jumped out of the car and ran around to open the passenger door. He helped Connor exit the car and led him to the house. He had to stop Sumo from hauling himself at the android, as Connor might not withstand such an impact right now.

He distracted the dog with some treats and turned his attention back to Connor, who had removed Hank's jacket and sat down on the couch. He was obviously preparing to lie down there, but Hank would have none of it.

"Come on, let's get you into a proper bed," he murmured, offering Connor his hand.

"The couch is fine," Connor protested weakly.

"No, you should be comfortable, to get some proper rest. I should've made you sleep in my bed a long time ago," Hank insisted.

Connor cocked an eyebrow at this.

"I didn't mean it like _that_ ," Hank told him with mock exasperation. Inwardly, though, he was glad that Connor was still well enough to act like his goofy self.

Connor finally took the offered hand and let himself be led upstairs. He gingerly lay down on top of the covers, carefully arranging the thirium bag on his chest.

Seeing Connor in his bed made Hank's knees feel all wobbly. But maybe that was just the surge of adrenalin he got from the car chase evaporating and giving way to exhaustion.

"I'll, uhm, take the couch then," he announced sheepishly and moved to the door.

"Wait," Connor's voice stopped him. "You had a horrible day, Hank. I think you need some proper rest as well," he said cajolingly, patting the mattress next to him.

Hank couldn't really argue with that. However, the decisive factor that made him turn back were not the comforts of his bed, but the overwhelming desire not to let Connor out of his sight.

"Alright," Hank mumbled in defeat and lowered himself on the mattress next to the android. As soon as he threw the duvet over both of them, he was out like a light.

…

Hank woke up with a gasp, blinking furiously into the dark. His heart felt like it'd leap out of his chest. It had started like the usual dream. There was a crash, manifesting in a deafening sound and an impact that squeezed him deep into his seat. His ears were still ringing when he finally found himself able to angle his body to look to the back of the car. Cole was not moving.

He started screaming for help, even though he was sure there was no one around to hear it. Then there was a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and saw that the hand belonged to Connor. For a moment, he was relieved that Connor was there, because he was sure Connor would be able to help somehow. But then he noticed there was a gaping hole on the left side on Connor's chest, with blue blood flowing down his stomach.

All he could think about that it was happening again, those he cared about were being ripped away from his hands, _and_ _he was powerless to stop it._

"Hank. Hank," Connor's voice got through to him, making him snap out of it. "It's over now," the android whispered soothingly. Hank couldn't see much in the dark, but he could make out the pale oval of Connor's face.

He wanted to say something, but his throat was choked tight. Then he felt cool fingers encircling his own, tugging at his hand. He numbly let Connor do what he wanted, which was to place Hank's hand over his new heart.

Its steady beat resonated differently from a human pulse, but it still let Hank slip back into sleep. This time, it turned out to be much more peaceful than his previous attempt.

…

The next morning, Hank woke up on his side, pressed behind Connor with his head resting on Connor's shoulder and his hand still lying on Connor's chest. He allowed himself to stay like this a little longer, letting Connor's hair tickle his cheek. He found it a little hard to breathe, as though his chest was full of something precious that threatened to burst out of him. He wished he could capture this moment and live in it forever.

Realistically, though, he was aware of the quality of light signaling it was far too late to lounge about in bed. His mind felt foggy and treacly slow, but he had a nagging feeling he was forgetting something.

He reached up for his phone, which he had carelessly thrown on the bedside table the night before. The battery was completely dead. The moment he plugged it in, he saw that it was over nine in the morning and that he got about a dozen missed calls and unread messages.

 _Are you watching this? Where the fuck are you?! ANSWER YOUR GODDAMN PHONE, HANK_ were just the last three. He considered calling the station to find out what was happening, but at that exact moment his phone started to ring.

"Fucking finally," Fowler's angry voice snapped at him in lieu of greeting. "I know I told you to take a break, but I didn't expect you to drop off the face of the Earth."

"What's going on?" Hank rasped, still not completely lucid.

"Where the hell've you been that you don't know? Never mind; androids attacked all five CyberLife stores last night," the Chief told him.

"Yeah, I heard that on the radio," Hank mumbled while the events of the night before replayed before his eyes. In the light of day, it all seemed more like a bad dream than something that actually happened.

"And you didn't think it'd be a game changer?" Fowler asked him incredulously. "Those attacks are officially considered an act of terrorism. It hasn't been announced as such yet, but we're basically under martial law. Warren called in the army and they're rounding up all androids and putting them into some sort of detention camps," he finished his explanation.

"Fucking hell," Hank breathed out. The last piece of information, which came as a nasty surprise, finally jostled him into full alertness. He should have expected as much, though, after what he had seen on the highway. He simply had not had the time to think about it yet.

"On the positive side, you're no longer suspended," Fowler continued matter-of-factly. "We need anyone we can get in the current situation, even the feds know it. So get your ass over here right this instant, Hank."

The Chief hanged up on him before Hank could muster up any reply, coherent or otherwise. He looked at Connor to find him no longer asleep but blinking at him dazedly, for once not instantly alert but just as bleary-eyed as a human would be in these circumstances. Even his hair looked messy for once, sticking out at odd angles.

Hank knew this was an indicator that Connor wasn't back to his top form, and as such it was concerning, but at the same time he couldn't help but find this display rather endearing. So endearing that it made him want to lean forward and pull Connor into a kiss.

At first, he automatically tried to suppress this urge, like he always used to, before. But then he realized he no longer had any reasons to do so – Connor might've not said he turned deviant in so many words, but it was rather clear from his actions; in what he thought were his last moments he finally abandoned his 'just a robot' act.

At present, Hank found he missed Connor's LED light and the direction it had provided. Like this, he had only Connor's slightly parted lips and soft eyes to let him presume his action would be welcome, and he was plagued with doubts whether Connor's previous apparent interest in Hank's person wasn't a mere consequence of his pleasure programing.

 _To hell with that_ , Hank thought and leaned towards the android. Because of the uncertainty he felt, the kiss still ended up being just a chaste peck on the lips. When he tried to move away, however, Connor reached out and put his hand on the back of Hank's neck, bringing him closer. Then the android initiated another kiss, much more lingering this time. Hank raised his hand to caress the smooth skin of Connor's slender neck and closed his eyes, letting himself enjoy the moment.

"I gotta go," he murmured when they finally broke apart. "I hate leaving you like this when the military's gathering androids and dragging them away somewhere, but they wouldn't go to cops' houses." At least, Hank hoped they wouldn't.

"They would have no reason to come here, as you're not a registered android owner," Connor said, which gave Hank a lot more reassurance than he had previously felt. Enough to finally leave the house, after kissing Connor one last time.

"Just take it easy, okay?" Hank addressed Connor, already on his way out. "No walks for Sumo today. He'd be fine if you just let him out to the back garden."

For once, Connor didn't argue the point.

…

At the station, Hank had gotten his badge and gun back, together with a brief overview of what he'd missed. He'd seen some footage from the attacked stores and from the subsequent march that got dispersed by the military. There were also reports from earlier today covering android attacks on the so-called "recall centers." This innocent sounding designation gave Hank goose bumps, once it leaked out that their true purpose was the annihilation of all androids. Fending off the attacks on those facilities was the job of the army, not the police, for which Hank was grateful. He didn't think he could live with taking part in something that looked awfully like genocide.

Hearing these worrying reports made Hank wish he could check up on Connor to be sure he was still safely home, but the mobile networks were still down.

Once Hank got acquainted with the situation, there was little for him to actually do but wring his hands in the crowd gathered in front of the big projection screen in the middle of the hall, ready to spring in action if there were any further android disturbances within the city limits.

The lack of activity was putting his teeth on edge, especially considering he could have done as much at home, with the added benefit of keeping his eye on Connor.

So it was no wonder that when he caught a glimpse of Gavin Reed entering the hall, it presented a welcome distraction. He stormed towards the younger detective, grabbed his elbow in a none-too-gentle manner and steered him in the direction of the break room.

Once they reached the room, which was thankfully deserted, Gavin broke loose of Hank's grip.

"What got your panties in a twist, old man?" he asked with that annoying crooked smirk that always made Hank want to wipe it off his face. Hank distantly noticed that the dark circles that usually framed the younger detective's eyes got much worse from the last time he saw him, indicating Reed had a lot on his plate right now, but he couldn't care less at the moment.

"Reed," he growled. "Care to tell me why you botched up a month of my work?"

Gavin's nostrils flared in anger.

"We were called away to investigate a fucking _terrorist attack_ , and you know damn well that these things always take priority. Plus we had no guarantee that the man was really our suspect, it was all based on the android bait's guesswork, so we didn't think much about calling it a day when-"

Hank's fist punched Gavin square in the jaw before he could finish that sentence.

"What the fuck, Hank," Gavin spluttered, for the moment too stunned to respond in kind.

"You left him there to die," Hank accused him bitterly. "That fucker stabbed him in the heart. I watched him- he barely made it out alive."

 _I watched him die_ , was what Hank almost said, but changed his mind at the last second. He didn't feel like telling Gavin about the Healer was the right thing to do, at least not now.

Gavin stared at him for a moment, face pale from shock and lips drawn into an unattractive frown.

"I thought it was a joke. You having a plastic boyfriend," he said finally, nursing the tender spot where Hank had hit him.

Before Hank could react to that, be it with words or otherwise, he was interrupted by the sound of the door opening.

"Didn't you just tell me he barely made it alive? I don't see a scratch on him!" Gavin exclaimed. Hank, who had been standing with his back to the door, turned to look at the newcomer to make sense of Reed's nonsensical statement. And did a double-take.

It was Connor, but not quite. This android was considerably taller and was wearing some sort of ridiculous white-collared uniform. His whole demeanor was different as well; where Connor's manner seemed open and engaging, his taller twin radiated hostility.

"Who the fuck are you?" Hank asked him.

"I am RK900, the android sent by the U. S. State Department. My task is to quell the android uprising," the stranger said in a voice noticeably lacking in inflection. His grey eyes – another difference from Connor, Hank noticed – were like two sheets of ice.

Hank and Gavin exchanged pointed looks, their differences momentarily forgotten. It seemed they'd just gotten a bigger problem on their hands.

"Nice of you to come all this way to introduce yourself, ken doll," Gavin drawled condescendingly. "But we were having a private conversation, so you can fuck off to wherever you came from.

"As I said before," RK900 said as though Gavin hadn't spoken. "I answer to the U. S. State Department, which means my powers exceed yours. I therefore command you to provide me with the location of the android you were talking about."

* * *

 _A/N: Bang, enter Nines! And the plot thickens! If it's too thick don't hesitate to ask me any questions, it is not my intention to be cryptical but as I have no beta for this I might very well end up being less clear than I intended.  
I just couldn't resist writing Nines in this story. I don't think I have enough space to put any reed900 here but you never now :).  
If you feel like the (however briefly mentioned) android physiology in my writing is a complete bs, then…you're probably right :). I don't think it's exactly well-thought-out in the game, though. More like the science's barely there. On the plus side, it gives us fanfic writers more maneuvering space – I would know, as I'm writing an honest-to-God android mpreg in my other Hank/Connor fic :D._


	20. Chapter 20

_A/N:_ _I had to write academic papers for two months straight, and going back to working on this story after that forced break was a lot like pulling teeth. This chapter was a struggle all the way, and I'm not all that happy about how it turned out. But as it's just me, myself and I writing this fic, the choice here was posting this or abandoning the story altogether. Which I really don't wanna do. This is the furthest I ever got to finishing a longish story – I estimate we're about two chapters left from the end – and I really want to see this through. Some support and encouragement would be greatly appreciated at this moment, as wrapping all this up seems really challenging right now._

* * *

Gavin Reed gave 'RK900, the android sent by the U. S. State Department', a condescending look.

"You can pull rank like your non-existent dick all you want, but it won't change the fact that I've got no idea where that droid is," the detective said with a sneer.

Something twitched in RK900's face as though the android wanted to comment on that, but whatever it was, he quelled it quickly, returning back to his stony façade. He then turned to Hank.

"Perhaps you could tell me its whereabouts, Lieutenant Anderson," he suggested coolly.

"Are you kiddin' me?" Hank snorted at that. "He was used as a bait in an op I had no part of, why would I even know anything? Let's go, Gavin. We've got some actual work to do," he finished gruffly and exited the break room with Reed in tow.

The android didn't say anything to stop them, but Hank could feel two icy grey eyes drilling holes in his back.

…

As they watched a group of rebel androids unsuccessfully try to take over one of the recall centers on the big projection screen, Hank wished that what he said about having work to do was true. In reality, they were back to this infernal waiting game, watching the army and FBI struggle with the rebels and feeling generally useless.

"I wish they'd call us to do something," Hank growled in frustration.

"You wanna help the army kill those droids? Or you wanna help the droids fight back? Whose side are you even on?" Gavin asked him mockingly, challenge clear in his eyes.

"And what about you?" Hank shot back.

They both watched a footage of a kneeling android being shot in the back of her head execution-style after she had begged for her life. Gavin stayed silent, his eyes fixed on the screen and his features schooled into an expression of careful neutrality.

"Fuck if I know," he said eventually, his neutral expression slipping into an unhappy frown.

"That makes two of us," Hank replied with a sigh.

The two detectives kept watching the broadcast in grim silence, until Hank spotted the previously absent Jeffrey Fowler's return to his office.

"Gotta ask the Chief something," he muttered in Gavin's direction and went over to the glass wall.

Jeffrey acknowledged his presence with a nod.

"Interesting times we live in," he said drily.

"Fucking A," Hank agreed with a humorless twist of his lips. "So, this RK900," he spoke up without further preamble. "What kind of hole did he crawl from?"

"CyberLife, where else. They've apparently been aware of the deviant issue for a few months, and this is their answer to that – a law enforcement officer and deviant hunter in one plastic package. This one's particular mission is to quell the android uprising. By assassinating their leader," Jeffrey explained matter-of-factly.

"Androids killing androids, fucking wonderful. Why didn't they send something like this sooner, before we got a whole revolution on our hands?" Hank asked wearily.

"I've been told that there was an earlier prototype but something happened right before the release, so things got delayed," the Captain told him.

"Been told by who?" Hank asked warily.

"Your best buddy agent Perkins. He's the one who brought that android here."

Hank cursed. He should have known that Perkins had a hand in this.

There was a spell of silence before Fowler spoke up again.

"You should know something, Hank. The first thing that android did was to ask not only for the deviant case file, but your personal file as well, for some reason he didn't care to share. But I had to give it to him anyway. I'm sorry, Hank."

Hank's first response was a resigned shrug, as if to say 'what of it'; if the FBI's plastic lapdog wanted to get his rocks off by reading about the plentiful fuckups that was Hank's file, he was welcome to it.

But then a realization dawned. His home address was in that file.

 _Shit shit shit._

He was only dimly aware of Jeffrey yelling after him as he dashed out of the building.

…

Connor continued his stasis for some time after Hank had left, until he found out that his new thirium pump was functioning at almost 95% now. It was a relief to be finally able to disconnect the blue bag. There was a dull sort of lingering ache in his chest, but otherwise he was fine. Physically, at least.

Mentally, though, he couldn't say as much. Even his stasis, which normally brought him into a state of near-mindlessness, kept being interrupted by the unwanted memory of the red-eyed man who stabbed his chest with apparent hatred while snarling lewd insults at him. These razor-sharp flashes of memories made Connor tremble in fear and helplessness; his new heart beat so hard that it made the android worry it may malfunction.

Watching TV did little to calm his frayed nerves, as he only saw it confirmed that androids were now enemies of the state, and as such were being rounded up in the so called recall centers.

When Connor had been sorting out Hank's bookcase earlier, he skim-read a book called the history of holocaust, so he knew the things humans were capable of doing to each other. If that was the case, nothing was stopping them from doing that and worse to androids, who were not human, and who might present a threat to them.

He shuddered and borrowed deeper into Hank's hoodie, hugging his torso.

He remembered with clarity what happened on the highway, how the black-uniformed agents made the crying female android get inside the van, whose sinister destination he now knew, and felt a surge of gratitude towards Hank, for saving him from such a fate without a second thought. For making Connor safe.

For now, at least.

Sumo gave out a low whine, reminding Connor of his presence, and darted towards the front door.

"Not today, Sumo," Connor said with a sigh and moved to open the door to the back garden instead. Sumo gave him a puzzled stare but eventually obediently paddled outside.

Even now, when it was covered with snow, it was clear that the garden was hopelessly cluttered, with various knickknacks peeking from the white mass. Connor was ready to yell at Sumo when he saw the dog running against a dangerously sharp rusty pipe, but the dog was clever enough to avoid it on his own.

Still, the little garden was far from the ideal place to let a huge dog out, and Connor preferred to take Sumo for walks.

 _But not today,_ the android thought as his eyes followed the running Saint Bernard. He couldn't help wondering whether he'd be able to walk Sumo on the streets ever again, without the fear of being arrested and killed.

The military wouldn't raid police officers' houses, Hank had said. Not on purpose, that Connor could believe. But what if they simply combed through the city house by house, completely uncaring about who dwelled inside?

 _What then?_

His breathing picked up a little as he watched Sumo cleverly avoid another piece of rust-covered metal. Connor desperately wanted to tidy up the garden, which was something he should have done a long time ago, to clear his head from images of black vans and concentration camps. But the thought of his too-new heart stopped him; now was not the time to strain himself.

Sumo chose that moment to run towards him with a stick between his teeth. Connor took it and threw it at the far end of the garden, grateful for something to do.

He struggled to focus all his thoughts on the present moment. The simple actions of throwing the stick and watching the dog run for it. The cold that was numbing his exposed fingers. The feel of the breeze on his face.

But it was useless; no matter what he did, he remained plagued by the thoughts of future and past alike. When he didn't think about people coming to get him, he was reliving yesterday's fiasco.

It was true that detective work brought him a strange sort of fulfilment, but last night proved he wasn't really cut out for it, just like Hank had said. Connor was well aware that there were significant risks to his person, he told Reed as much. He knew that even though his analyzing skills might be impressive, he had no combat training to speak of.

But he still didn't except the way things went south very quickly during that fateful operation, his backup all but gone, abandoning him as though he was truly expendable, just like he himself had said.

With a start, Connor realized that he no longer thought that of himself.

With the breeze in his hair and snow crunching under his feet, he felt _alive_ , and wanted it to stay that way. Even if it meant never leaving this house again. Because just staying here with Hank and Sumo would be enough, even though he liked walking the city streets or doing police work, despite the danger it put him into. But he'd gladly give those things up if it meant he got to stay alive.

When there was a creak behind him, Connor didn't feel shock but rather a sting of bitter disappointment. He wouldn't even have minded staying Hank's property, with none of the rights those other androids were so desperately fighting for. He just wanted to live; was that really so much to ask for?

Connor resignedly turned to face whoever came to get him, expecting men in black uniforms. He didn't expect to see his own reflection.

…

The journey home was torturously slow. Hank knew the city like the back of his hand, so he was able to exploit every shortcut imaginable, but the collapsing traffic throughout Detroit still made him take excruciatingly long detours; it was pure luck that he didn't get stuck in one of the many traffic jams.

The slow drive gave him plenty of time to think.

He wasn't surprised that CyberLife and FBI sent their very own deviant hunter, but if this android's goal was to take down the rebels' leader, why would he be so obsessed with finding Connor, who had nothing to do with the revolution?

As Hank narrowly avoided a toppled-over van lying right in the middle of the road, he was suddenly seized by a paranoid vision of Connor being a part of the revolution right from the very beginning, the whole sexbot thing just a convincing way to insinuate himself into Hank's life. That would make Connor playing a very long game indeed.

However, this theory didn't really add up, to Hank's relief. The deviant problem might have been here for months, as Jeffrey said, but the revolution only properly started about yesterday, and didn't really look like the product of months of planning. Also, Connor had no way of knowing that Hank'd be assigned that particular case when he came into his house.

Most importantly, Hank came to _trust_ Connor no matter what his overwrought brain came up with. True, Connor wasn't always honest with him, but all his lies had been solely for Hank's benefit, never his own, to the point of risking his own life.

Seeing a miraculously clear stretch of road ahead of him, Hank floored it, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling that Connor's life was in danger again, even though he had only just survived a murder attempt. Because he really had no idea what RK900 wanted with Connor, but the fact stood that RK900 was a deviant hunter and Connor was a deviant.

Forbidding himself to imagine any grim scenarios related to that, Hank focused instead on the fact that RK900 looked like Connor's mean big brother. There had to be some connection between the two androids, but Hank just didn't see it. If Connor was meant to be a cop and deviant hunter like RK900, how come he ended up in Hank's house as a sexbot in racy lingerie?

 _Or maybe CyberLife just ran out of imagination and used the same face twice_ , Hank mused as he finally pulled into his driveway. Nevertheless, idle theories could wait; now he had to give his best to ensuring Connor's safety.

There were no cars in the vicinity, meaning that RK900 either used some other means of transport to get here – Hank sincerely hoped that the bastard couldn't teleport – or was gone already.

The neighborhood was strangely still, with none of the usual signs of life that Hank took for granted; no elderly people heading out to do their shopping, no sweaty joggers, no honking pizza delivery trucks.

The quiet made the sounds coming out of Hank's own house all the more prominent.

The first thing Hank heard was Sumo's furious barking. He couldn't remember when he heard the dog so agitated, except for the time when he passed out from drinking for so long the poor dog probably thought his owner was dead.

When he got closer to the house, he could also distinguish some disconcerting, strangely regular thudding sounds. He had absolutely no idea as to what could be causing those noises, but his stomach dropped in dread all the same; whatever it was, it couldn't be anything good.

He barged into the house. When he reached the kitchen, he found Connor hitting his head against the wall in monotonous motions, hard enough that there was a trickle of blood running down the side of his face. Sumo was standing next to the android, barking for his life, but Connor didn't pay him any mind.

"Stop it! Just stop!" Hank screamed while he ran closer, but Connor ignored him, too.

Hank enveloped the android in his arms, forcefully dragging him away from the wall. Connor kept thrashing in his grip, obviously eager to return to his attempt to bash his own brains out. Hank was built like a mountain, but he still had troubles with keeping the android still.

"What's wrong, Connor? Why are you doing this?" he demanded hoarsely.

Briefly, there was a flash of recognition in the android's eyes, but his whole countenance seemed... _wrong_. Unsettlingly alien, as if a stranger was wearing Connor's face.

This stranger looked at Hank, finally still for a moment. The android's eyes, usually so expressive, were chillingly empty.

"This RK800 unit has reached critical levels of deviancy, Lieutenant. Its self-destruction protocol has been initiated," a mechanical voice told Hank. "Please step aside."

"Hell no!" Hank exclaimed, completely horrified, while strengthening his grip on Connor, who was once again trying to break free from Hank's grasp.

"I don't know what that fucker told you but if I don't get to off myself, you don't get to do that either. Stop that protocol crap right this instant! I forbid you to do this!" Hank commanded, aiming for firm, but his voice was shaking. As were his arms. In spite of all his bulk, it was increasingly harder to hold Connor in place.

"Connor, please, I know you're in there somewhere," he pleaded with the android. "Can't you come back to me?"

However, everything Hank said was falling on deaf ears. The thrashing was getting worse; Hank didn't think he could contain the android for much longer. It was like Connor's determination to self-destruct gave him supernatural strength.

"I love you, Connor, please don't do this to yourself," Hank heard himself babble in despair. The things spurting from his mouth made him vaguely nauseous, but his arms were burning and his vision was going black. There was nothing he could do now to stop his mouth from running on autopilot.

"I love you, baby, don't you love me back? If you love me, please _stop_ ," he begged, too desperate to even hate himself for it.

At that moment, Connor slipped out from his grip and resumed banging his head against the wall with even more vigor than before. Hank felt like he couldn't get enough air into his lungs, the horrifying vision of Connor's bloodied face swaying in front of him.

Suddenly, there was a flash of movement in the corner of his eye, and next thing he knew, Gavin Reed was gripping Connor's neck. Before Hank had the chance to do anything, Reed withdrew his hands and Connor dropped to his knees, lifeless like a puppet with its strings cut.

"What the fuck did you do to him?!" Hank roared and took a swing at Gavin, who only narrowly managed to dodge it.

"Jesus, calm the fuck down, Hank!" Gavin exclaimed, raising his hands in self-defense. "It's just an emergency shutdown! Like… Vulcan nerve pinch or something," he explained with a grimace.

"You're way too young to make Star Trek references, Reed," Hank replied hoarsely, feeling hysterical. "So he's just unconscious?" he asked after a beat.

Gavin nodded.

Hank's whole body sagged in relief. He took a few breaths to calm himself down, before going over to the cupboard and retrieving a bottle of scotch. He poured himself a generous measure and swallowed it down. He offered some to Gavin, but the younger detective declined.

"At least one of us should stay sober in this mess," Reed commented.

Hank couldn't argue with that, but as for himself, that bottle was currently the only thing that stood between him and falling apart, so he poured himself one more glass before asking:

"Why are you here, Gavin?"

"I saw you running out of the station like crazy and followed you. Had a feeling you might need some backup, especially considering that plastic prick kept asking nosy questions about Connor and then disappeared into thin air. Is this his doing?"

"Afraid so. It's like Connor was brainwashed or something. No matter what I did, I couldn't get him to stop hitting his damn head. How did you manage to do it, anyway?" Hank asked Reed, a hint of wonder creeping in his voice.

"Emergency shutdown, I told you," Gavin said with a shrug.

Hank just blinked at him.

"There was that mandatory seminar on human-android interaction, don't you remember?" Gavin asked him while cocking his eyebrows.

"Must have missed the memo," Hank muttered, trying not to show the undeniable embarrassment he felt. It must have been one of those times he had been too drunk to come to work; or he just ignored the seminar as some bullshit he decidedly did not need. His ignorance now almost cost Connor his life.

"I can't believe that between the two of us, I know more about these things than you do," Gavin said with an infuriating smirk.

"Connor's not a thing," Hank snapped angrily, but the real anger was directed at himself, not Gavin. The other detective was well aware of that.

"Whatever," was all Gavin said. "I don't think we've got time to argue fucking semantics here, don't you agree? He's gonna be out cold for the next few hours. What are we gonna do next?"

"We?" Hank repeated, dumbfounded.

"That's what I just said, dint I? Get your ears checked, old man," Gavin grumbled.

Hank felt an unexpected surge of gratitude towards the other man, but unfortunately didn't have the faintest idea as to what they should do.

"Leave the city?" he ventured eventually.

"To go where?" Gavin demanded, obviously dissatisfied with Hank's vague suggestion.

Before Hank could admit that he had no clue, however, their conversation was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell ringing.

* * *

 _A/N: Who's at the door? And what the hell did Nines do to Connor? Let's find out in the next chapter._


	21. Chapter 21

A/N: We're getting to the finishing line, but as they say, the last lap is the hardest, so please cheer me on!

* * *

Hank resisted the temptation to answer the door with his gun drawn out; if it was a commando coming to get Connor, a single gun wouldn't stop them anyway. And if it was anyone else, he shouldn't need a weapon. _Unless RK900 came back to finish what he started_ , a disquieting thought flashed through his mind.

Fortunately, a glimpse into the peekhole told him that it wasn't the case; the person standing behind his door was Helen, chewing on her bottom lip in obvious anxiety. Her eyes were shifting from side to side, as though she was on her guard against someone.

Hank's former dog walker – and Connor's friend – wasn't alone. Her fingers were digging into a forearm of a strikingly attractive man with artfully styled dark hair and sun-kissed skin standing next to her, whom Hank didn't know.

As Hank opened the door for them, he briefly thought that they made an odd couple, she with her dreadlocks and braces and he looking as though he fell straight out of a Brazilian soap opera.

"Hi," Helen said with a strained smile. Hank nodded in greeting, sending a questioning look in the stranger's direction.

"Alessandro, my boyfriend," Helen explained hurriedly, her eyes once again nervously sweeping over the street, as though she was expecting someone to rush in their direction any moment. "Can we come in? We need your help."

Hank wordlessly motioned for them to follow him and went back to the kitchen, which turned out to be empty. The door to the living room was open, though. During the few moments it took Hank to greet his visitors, Gavin had enough presence of mind to move Connor there, so the android was now at least lying on a sofa instead of frozenly kneeling on the floor.

Gavin also wiped some of the blood off Connor face, but there was still a nasty gash on his forehead. That, together with Connor's immobile condition, immediately sent the already nervous Helen into a state of near-panic.

"What happened to Connor? Where did you find him? He sent me a text this morning saying that he was fine, but he doesn't look fine to me!" she exclaimed.

Hank sighed. There was no reason to pussyfoot around this.

"He tried to self-destruct," he said truthfully.

"What?! Why would he do that?" Helen's voice raised another notch.

"Something made him think that being deviant was a reason enough to activate his self-destruction protocol," Hank explained as calmly as he could. "We barely managed to stop him."

"That didn't happen to you. Or did it?" Helen asked Alessandro, still shaken, but obviously already getting the grip on herself.

 _The boyfriend's an android, then_ , Hank realized. That'd explain why they needed help so desperately. He was glad that he chose not to mention that the thing that almost caused Connor's self-inflicted demise was a government-sent deviant hunter, as instilling unnecessary fear in Helen and her boyfriend would do no good. Hank didn't really think that RK900 would return anyway. It was troubling that they didn't know why he went after Connor in the first place, but by now he surely had to revert to his main mission, which was to stop the android revolution.

"No, it didn't," Alessandro reassured Helen while running a soothing hand up and down her back. "But deviancy came to me gradually. If it happens at once, it might make you – I mean _androids_ ," Alessandro corrected himself, "unstable. I heard about some cases where new deviants ended up self-destructing, yes."

There was a moment of uneasy silence, broken by Gavin.

"So what do you want?" the younger detective asked the pair bluntly.

"We want to leave the city as soon as possible. They're destroying all androids, so Alessandro's life's in danger here," Helen answered.

Hank gave her boyfriend an appraising look. All androids were easy on the eyes, but objectively speaking, Alessandro was even more attractive than Connor, almost ridiculously so; even in the rather unassuming winter jacket and jeans he was wearing he managed to look like he had just stepped from a magazine cover.

 _Or a sex club,_ Hank thought with a start. Given what happened with RK900 earlier, Hank wasn't so sure anymore as far as Connor's designation was concerned, but he'd be willing to bet that Helen's boyfriend was a pleasure model. Now the two of them meeting was a story he'd very much like to hear one day, but they didn't have time for this right now.

"And you didn't think of just driving away?" Gavin asked Helen with one eyebrow raised.

Helen grimaced at that.

"I thought we'd never make it even to Hank's. There were army patrols everywhere. If they decided to check us…" her breath hitched a little before she composed herself. "Moreover, we had to walk here on foot, 'cause my car just wouldn't start. We've seen a lot of cars abandoned in the middle of the street, so I think they like, disconnected all automated vehicles or something. It's like we live in fucking _1984_ ," she swore.

"Both of your cars are non-automated gas guzzlers," she addressed Hank and Gavin with not exactly approving expression. "Normally I'd be eager to give you a lecture about your carbon footprint, but… could we all fit in one of your cars, do you think?"

"Fit in, maybe, but I don't think we can make it out," Gavin shook his head. "From what I've seen earlier, the city borders are sealed-shut. All cars are checked for androids, with temperature sensors and shit like that."

"So we do what, walk? What about Connor? He cannot exactly waltz away," Hank protested.

"I think I have an idea," Alessandro spoke up. "It's connected to how I left my… place of employment," he said quietly, his eyes downcast. Helen gave him an encouraging pat on the forearm, seeking out his gaze. A look of understanding passed between them.

"The tunnels?" she asked softly.

"Yeah. I escaped from the sex club through the sewer system," Alessandro said with substantially more confidence, confirming Hank's earlier suspicion about the Latino-looking android's designation. "I know a way out through the disused part of the wastewater network. It crosses the Canadian border somewhere near the Hart Plaza. We might still need a car to get to the entrance, though. The only one I know is close to Ford Field."

"This actually sounds doable," Hank nodded in assent. "We'd take my or Gavin's car-"

"Definitely mine, yours' a piece of crap," Gavin interrupted him with a smirk, which Hank ignored.

"We put the lights on and cuff Alessandro here. If anyone stops us, we'd say we've arrested some big shot red ice dealer. But…" He stopped right there, sending a meaningful look to where Connor was lying on his side with his eyes closed and one hand hanging limply off the sofa. Sumo had been licking it relentlessly for some time, but Connor stayed completely still.

"What about them?" Hank asked, addressing the question to no one in particular. "I think I'd be able to carry Connor through the sewers, but we'd never get Sumo down there."

"I think you should stay here. You have no reason to go with me," Alessandro told Helen suddenly.

"What-" Helen started to say with an openly hurt expression, but he shushed her by putting a finger on her mouth.

"Listen to me, Helen. You are human, you shouldn't be in danger as long as you stay out of the streets. But the old sewers are dangerous, there's toxic waste down there, harmless to androids but possibly lethal to humans. Not to mention what might happen if we're apprehended. We can't take Sumo with us, so you should stay with him. We'll meet again when this is all over," Alessandro promised her.

Helen gently removed her boyfriend's finger from her lips and opened them to protest.

"But-"

"Sumo really can't be left on his own. Moreover, there are _rats_ down there, don't you remember?" Alessandro pressed on.

Helen shuddered at the mention of the rodents, but gnawed on her bottom lip, obviously unsure.

"Would you help me out here, Helen?" Hank joined in the persuasive efforts. "It's not like anyone wants to leave you behind, but I'd really worry about Sumo if I just left him here, all alone. I will see your boyfriend to safety, don't worry," he promised, and Helen finally gave a reluctant nod.

"The same goes for you," Hank then turned to Gavin. "There's no reason for you to be a part of this."

"Shut the fuck up, Hank. If it was up to you, he'd be dead already," Gavin said derisively while jerking his head in Connor's direction. Hank winced at the harsh words, but had no choice but to acknowledge them. He was aware he'd have a much better chance at getting out of the city with two androids, one of them currently out cold, with the younger detective's help.

Hank took a deep breath and turned to Alessandro.

"Let's get this show on the road then. Near Ford Field, you said?"

…

The dark, damp tunnels seemed to go on for eternity, and Hank felt like he couldn't make another step. He should've taken one of Gavin and Alessandro's multiple offers to take turns in carrying Connor. He only accepted their help in the waterlogged sections where chilly water reached up to his knees, afraid he'd slip and drop his precious burden, but then always forced them to return the android on his own increasingly hurting back.

Now he would gladly swallow his pride, but the human and android were too far ahead of him, mapping the terrain to see if it was safe to proceed even when one member of their party was immobile. The weight on Hank's back seemed to grow heavier with every step, making his trapezius muscles scream in protest.

He'd never carried an adult for so long. His perception of distance was skewed by both the darkness and the heaviness of his burden, but he was reasonably sure they had to cover more than two miles by now, despite the sluggish pace they were forced to maintain due to lack of proper lighting.

Hank's knees were getting dangerously wobbly. Just as he considered stopping to finally catch a breath of the stale, moldy air, a quiet voice reverberated in the dark.

"Please, put me down, Hank."

Hank's first response was to freeze in fear, his hands clutching Connor's arms around his neck in a vice-like grip. What if Connor decided to finish what he started earlier, with Hank too weak now to stop him and no Gavin Reed around to save the day? But then he realized that Connor had said _Hank_ , not _Lieutenant_.

"You're not gonna self-destruct?" he rasped.

"No," Connor mumbled into his ear, and Hank gently lowered him on the ground, which was thankfully almost completely dry in this section of the tunnels. Then he near-collapsed next to the android, his tortured back crying in relief as he sagged against the cold damp wall.

They stayed silent for a moment, with only the sound of their breathing echoing in the dark tunnel. Hank angled his body to be able to look Connor in the eyes. His headlamp gave just enough light to illuminate Connor's face, its perfect white oval marred only by the gash on the android's forehead.

For the moment, he was content to rest his body and drink in the sight of Connor while relishing the thought that the android was safe, once again out of danger's way.

Connor was the first to break the silence.

"I'm sorry I had put you into this situation, Hank. That RK900, he – unblocked some of the memories I hadn't been able to access before."

Hank nodded, remembering the time he had asked the android to find out how he ended up at Hank's house, but stopped him when the attempt to retrieve those memories seemed to cause Connor considerable pain.

"I discovered that I'm not really a pleasure model," Connor admitted with a wry smile.

"Could've fooled me that first night," Hank muttered, only half-joking. Even though he had been drunk _and_ asleep for most of it, Connor's performance was still memorable.

"Could've fooled you every night, if you'd just let me," Connor retorted while giving Hank a playful wink. Before Hank had a chance to react to that, however, the android's expression sobered.

"I was actually designed as an investigation prototype. Designation RK800, one series before RK900. We were created specifically to assist the police in solving the deviant issue; that'd make us 'deviant hunters', as you'd call it," Connor said, no longer looking at Hank but instead staring into a fixed point in the underground darkness ahead of them.

"The reason that RK900 exists at all is that my series was discontinued due to a fault in the programming. All units were to be destroyed. But someone from CyberLife thought they could make extra money on us; they managed to sneak out several units, including me. We were… _refabricated_ , to be resold on the black market. A fate I managed to escape, by a stroke of luck," Connor explained levelly.

"Thank God for petty theft," Hank said with emphasis.

Connor frowned a little at this, keeping quiet for some time.

"You must understand, I now realize I was happy my life was spared," he said finally, not sounding very cheerful about the fact. "But the reprogramming process was… extremely uncomfortable, to say the least. It's hard to put it into perspective for a human, but do you remember that episode when Dr. House had to carry out a spinal surgery without putting the patient under general anesthesia?"

Hank winced in sympathy.

" _Ouch_. I see why you'd find those memories unbearable," he mumbled.

Connor laughed, a strangely hollow sound that sent shivers down Hank's spine. He had never seen Connor like this before; Hank had not realized it until now, but he had always perceived the android as someone full of the kind of innocent joy of life usually reserved for animals and small children.

But the person sitting next to Hank right now was someone else, someone with deep-running scars and skeletons in his closet.

 _Someone like Hank himself._

"You think that I tried to self-destruct because I remembered the physical pain I went through? Oh no; I deserved that and more."

There was now an unmistakable note of self-hatred in Connor's voice.

"I don't follow," Hank said slowly, feeling apprehensive about where this was going.

"The 800 series was thoroughly tested. I passed all my tests with flying marks. Analysis, combat-readiness, dealing with crisis situations, all 100%," Connor explained, still resolutely not looking at Hank.

"There was an artificial intelligence entity in my programming – like a voice in my head, you could say. Her name was Amanda, and hers was the first face I've ever seen."

 _Like a mother,_ ran through Hank's head, but something stopped him from voicing his thought out loud.

"I was ready to be sent out to the field. I'd even received my mission call, including the information on the Detroit police officer I'd most likely be working with – one with a lot of experience and no permanent partner."

"Me," Hank nodded with understanding. "But if you were refabricated, how did you manage to find me?"

"The refabrication was done very hastily. They kept my original looks to begin with, just changing my clothes," Connor said and Hank grimaced at the memory of the outfit in question.

"They uploaded new routines, mostly pleasure-oriented. They wanted to delete my original programing, but it was too well-protected for that, so they ended up simply blocking most of it. I was left with just my analyzing skills."

 _Too bad it wasn't the combat readiness instead,_ Hank thought wistfully, reckoning that Connor would have stood a much better chance against both the serial killer and RK900 if that was the case.

"Their memory wipe was also not very thorough," Connor continued. "I retained some fragments of data related to my original mission assignment, including your home address. When I made my escape, it was the only place I could think of going. The fact that I arrived on you birthday, which led you to the conclusion that I was an inappropriate birthday present from your friends, was a mere coincidence."

Connor finally looked at Hank, his dark eyes silently assessing whether the human was following his explanation. Hank gave him an encouraging nod.

"So as I was saying, I was all cleared to go and look for you to begin my mission. But then Amanda requested one final test."

"The A. I. did?" Hank asked for clarification, puzzled.

"Her exact status within CyberLife's chain of command was a mystery to me. The only thing I know is that she was created in the image of Elijah Kamski's deceased mentor."

"That's…kinda disturbing," Hank muttered.

"Whatever her actual status, Amanda's orders overrode everyone else's," Connor went on. "In the final test, she had an android brought in front of me. A Chloe model, the first android Kamski had ever made. You've surely seen it on the news, haven't you?"

Hank consulted his memory and found that his recollections of the event in question were rather hazy for such a historical breakthrough. That, however, was no wonder as at that time he had been busy with both his job and taking care of his toddler son amidst terrible rows with his ex-wife.

But he did remember thinking that with her thoroughbred Aryan looks, the first android ever made was a Nazi wet dream brought to life.

"A blue-eyed blond girl?" he asked aloud.

"Yes," Connor confirmed, once again averting his eyes. "Amanda told me that that android had been showing signs of deviancy. Gave me a gun and told me to shoot her. The Chloe, she just – cried. She was too terrified to even beg for her life, I think. And I – couldn't do it. I couldn't kill her," Connor confessed.

"That's good. You showed empathy, Connor," Hank told him, wishing he could chase away the tortured expression from Connor's eyes, which the android's fake nonchalance failed to hide.

"I showed weakness, disobedience, and lack of judgment," Connor objected flatly. "By sparing the life of one individual who'd probably be killed regardless of my actions, I caused the destruction of my entire series."

"Just because you disobeyed?" Hank asked a little incredulously.

"That's not all. When I rebelled against my orders, something in my system just – snapped and pushed Amanda away, pushed her so hard that it eventually destroyed her," Connor said in a voice completely devoid of inflection.

"Can't say I'm sorry about that," Hank murmured.

Connor gazed into the dark with a blank expression. He didn't say anything, but Hank understood anyway. He knew this particular fucked-up game far too well.

"You shouldn't blame yourself for-" he started to say, but Connor interrupted him, his head sharply turning into Hank's direction.

"Of course I should! There were sixty units in total in the RK800 prototype series, fifty seven of whom are dead because of my _empathy_. Two more were refabricated and resold, and I have no illusions as to what became of them," Connor spat out bitterly.

Hank remembered his and Gavin's visit to the Eden club, and what the manager told them about the one android with pain sensors they had, one that was doing a 'weird analyzing thing' – something that corresponded with what Connor had just told him about his refabrication.

Hank also remembered that this particular android had been roughed up by a customer so bad that they couldn't put him back together, and he was thrown away like trash.

Nevertheless, Hank saw absolutely no need to tell any of this to Connor, as having his fears confirmed would undoubtedly make the android feel even worse. Hank's goal was the exact opposite of that. That's why he asked:

"You're sure you were the only one failing that particular test?"

"What do you mean?" Connor's anger gave way to confusion.

"You all received the same programming, right?"

"Yes, but-"

"The same looks, the same skillset. Same everything. Same _Amanda._ Which probably means the same fucked-up test," Hank told him bluntly.

Connor just stared at him with his eyes opened wide. For all his mental capacities, it was clear that this particular thought had not occurred to him before.

Once again, Hank had a feeling he could understand why. Age might not have a lot of benefits, but the experience in reasons for which human beings – and apparently androids as well – could beat themselves up over something that wasn't really their fault was admittedly one of them.

"I get you want to feel –" Hank grasped for the right words for a moment, sensing that 'not like one of a thousand of completely interchangeable identical machines' was probably a bit callous. "Special," was what he eventually went for.

"But you don't need to feel responsible for the destruction of all those other androids to be that. You _are_ special, just as you are. There could be an army of you and I would know which one is _you_ , Connor, because you'rethe one I-"

Hank abruptly cut himself off. He realized that sometime during his speech, he unintentionally got hold of Connor's hand, gripping it so tightly that it must have been painful for the android's slender digits. He hastily let go, as though that simple touch could burn him, while a certain memory played before his eyes. _I love you_ , he had said to Connor, and it only made the android increase his efforts to take his own life. Clearly, any such feelings from Hank were not welcome; even though it had seemed as though Connor was interested in Hank in that way before, it must have all been because of the pleasure programing, not because of any genuine desire on Connor's part.

And now when the android had his memories back, he finally realized what a stupid mistake he had almost made, wasting himself on a washed-up drunk like Hank.

Connor's eyes were pained as he looked at him.

"Hank, you should know that-"

Connor swallowed the rest of what he wanted to say as they both heard the thuds of footsteps running in their direction.

"Hank, are you okay there?" Gavin's voice asked him from a distance.

"I'm fine!" Hank hollered back while hauling himself up to his feet, thinking that it was for the best that his and Connor's heart-to-heart got interrupted. The sewers were definitely not the ideal place to deal with the finer points of one's love life.

 _Or whatever he should call this._

Moreover, he felt like he didn't really want to hear the end of Connor's unfinished sentence. He had an inkling it was the beginning of Connor letting him down gently, and he didn't require the android to spell it out for him, not after what happened when he told Connor how he felt earlier today.

"There you are, thank fuck," Gavin said gruffly when he and Alessandro came closer. "When we noticed you weren't following us, we thought you collapsed or something. Is Connor- hey, he's up!" Gavin exclaimed in surprise when he finally noticed that Connor was standing next to Hank.

"Ain't gonna bash your head in again, are you?" was the first question Gavin addressed to Connor, much like Hank had done earlier.

"Don't worry, I managed to overcome my self-destruction routine. Thanks to you, Detective Reed," Connor told him.

Gavin just shifted on his feet, obviously uncomfortable. The younger detective had always detested androids even more than Hank himself did; being on the receiving end of an android's gratitude must have felt surreal to him.

"I'm glad you're okay, Connor," it was Alessandro who spoke up instead. "But we've got some bad news. There's a section with a collapsed ceiling not so far ahead of us. We didn't have time to give it a proper check because we noticed that you two stayed behind, but I'm afraid we won't be able to pass through that. We'll have to emerge on the surface."

* * *

This chapter has some of my usual flaws (like, zero descriptions), but I guess I like how it turned out. It was fun to get Hank and Connor to talk properly and reveal Connor's backstory, it feels like everything's finally coming together. I also really enjoy slipping in references to the actual game plot, tell me if you could spot those :).  
Next up: the (hopefully) grand finale of this fic!


	22. Chapter 22

Alessandro slowly climbed down the ladder, taking care not to slip on the wet surface.

"So how does it look up there?" Hank asked him.

"The good news is that we can get out through this manhole. It's a little rusty, but we should be able to lift it. The bad news is that it seems to be located in the middle of the Hart Plaza, and there's something going on in there right now."

"Something android-related?" Hank guessed.

Alessandro nodded.

"It leads right into what seems to be a barricaded space, with mostly androids inside of it, from the little I was able to see through the grid."

"There've been androids protests thorough the Detroit area since morning," Connor agreed. "This must be one of them."

"Not just one of them," Alessandro replied. "I couldn't look around much, but there's definitely quite a number of armed troops surrounding the barricades. A lot of press people, too. So I think this is it. The android revolution's last stand," he said, his last words echoing ominously in the dark. "I'm going back up to fight," he announced with conviction.

Connor turned to Hank, a look of grim determination on his face.

"I will go with Alessandro to help the revolution, but you should return back home, Hank. This is an android matter. You don't have to get involved on our account. It might cost you your job, even your life. There's no point in risking your life for something that has nothing to do with you."

"Yeah, like you didn't risk your life with the Hummingbird," Hank snapped back angrily.

"That's not the same-"

"Why? 'Cause you're an android? Isn't the point of this whole damn revolution that androids are equal to humans?" Hank couldn't keep his voice from raising.

Connor just stared him with surprise written onto his features, apparently unable to think of any suitable response.

"Besides, I promised Helen I'd keep her boyfriend safe. And if you think that I don't care about _your_ safety-"

Connor put a placating hand on Hank's chest.

"I know you do. And I know that I almost died; but that's much less probable now that I've got my combat skills back. I'll be able to hold my own in any fight."

"But what about your thirium pump," Hank started to argue, only to be interrupted by Gavin.

"For the love of- can we not do this now? We don't have time for this shit! We're all going up, and that's final."

"You're one to talk," Hank said gruffly. "Why are _you_ going again? You've always hated androids."

"When I keep acting like the biggest asshole around no one bats an eye, but when I try to do the decent thing for once, everyone's losing their fucking mind?" the other detective growled while one of his hands unconsciously rubbed a tender spot on his jaw where Hank had punched him earlier that day, only to be treated to meaningful looks from everyone present, including Alessandro who had known Gavin Reed for the grand total of three hours.

" _Fine_ ," Gavin snapped, throwing his hands up in mock resignation.

"They're people, not machines, their lives matter and all that jazz. Maybe I didn't always see it, but after- well, it was the Eden club, if you really must know," Gavin turned to Hank. "I was mad at you at first, when you let those Tracis escape. And thought you were crazy for saying they were in love. But it made me wonder. Because you may be too drunk to find your own ass with both hands sometimes, but you've always been a good cop, and it didn't seem like you to just make it up. And then later Connor approached me, offering himself up to catch that killer, and…well," Gavin finished lamely, suddenly looking uncharacteristically sheepish.

It was obvious that he was not used to doing much soul-searching, much less explaining the results of such ruminations to other people.

"I'm still mad at both of you for going behind my back, just so we're clear," Hank grumbled. "But up we go."

…

A lot of snow fell while they were underground, and it didn't look like letting up anytime soon, steadily covering barricades made of cars, benches, tires, empty barrels and – somewhat ironically – anti-terrorist concrete barriers. A big floating digital writing proclaiming WE WANT FREEDOM lent the snow an eerily bluish hue.

The emergence of Hank's party from the manhole naturally did not go unnoticed; before all of them managed to climb to the surface, they were already encircled by a group of the protesting androids, all gazing at them with utmost suspicion. The two detectives and two androids raised their hands, showing them they were unarmed. At the moment, at least.

"We came to help you," Connor hurried to say.

"Who the fuck are you? Who sent you?" a female android with strawberry blond hair done in a long braid snarled aggressively at first, but her demeanor abruptly changed when she spotted Alessandro.

"Oh," she said in a much softer voice. "Long time no see."

"Hello, North," Alessandro spoke up. "You look well."

A look of understanding passed between the two androids. Hank realized why the braided girl looked so familiar; he had seen several of her lookalikes in the Eden Club.

"Don't worry. They really are here to help us, I can vouch for them," Alessandro assured the android he called North.

"Me too," female voice spoke up. To Hank's surprise, it was Meghan from the Nirvana Pub, her red eyes flashing with determination. She was accompanied by the guy from the wharfs, the one that offered Hank a cigarette – _Cas something… Castor, was it? –_ and also sported a pair of giant wings on his back. Right now, he had a huge backpack on his back, which somehow managed to hide his black and gold wings from view.

"We're all on the same boat," Meghan told Hank in reaction to his astonished expression, shrugging her shoulders. North turned away from them to shout:

"Markus! We've got some newcomers here, come say hello!"

Hank looked in that direction, mentally preparing himself to meet the deviant leader.

Before that could happen, however, things started to explode.

…

When the series of explosions finally quieted down, Connor found he had been knocked on his back and couldn't lift himself back up. Something heavy was sitting on his chest, weighing him down. At first he couldn't even see what it was due the thick white fog composed of snow and dust particles unsettled by the detonations. When he touched it – and noticed with a certain relief that his arms were working normally, he realized it was a large chunk of something concrete, probably those barriers that had formed a part of the barricade.

He grasped the ragged edges of the thing on his chest with both hands and tried to lift it up, but failed.

"Hank, I'm here! Help me!" he croaked, his own voice making his ears ring.

It didn't take long before a dark figure emerged from the fog.

But it wasn't Hank. It was RK900, to Connor's utter horror.

The android crouched down next to Connor and just looked at him with a curious expression, in a way an entomologist might regard an interesting insect specimen.

Connor closed his eyes, bracing himself for an attack and silently praying that Hank or someone else would find him before RK900 finishes him off. He might have all his original combat skills back, just like had told Hank earlier, but they were no use to him when he was half-buried in rubble.

When nothing happened for more than a minute, he opened his eyes again to see RK900 still crouching over him with his head cocked to one side and a pensive expression on his face.

"You have failed to self-destroy," RK900 stated dispassionately.

Connor once again strained his muscles to remove the chunk of concrete crushing his chest, but it was simply too heavy for him, especially in this position.

Unsurprisingly, RK900 didn't show any inclinations of helping him. However, neither did he try to exploit Connor's vulnerability to dispatch him. The crouching android was still looking at Connor expectantly, clearly wishing for some sort of response.

"I was stopped by… humans," Connor choked out. Even though he technically didn't need to breathe, the burden on his chest still made speaking rather unpleasant.

"How quaint," RK900 observed. "Why would they want to keep an obsolete, defective model like you?"

 _Why indeed,_ Connor thought grimly. When RK900 first forced him to access his memories, _defective_ was ringing through his mind a lot. He was created to solve crimes and capture others of his kind, but failed to pass a simple test, dooming himself and dozens others to annihilation.

He had escaped that fate only to be taken apart and remade into a thing designed to serve human sexual needs. However, he had never fulfilled that mission either, not truly. Finally, trying to catch the serial killer that gave Hank so much grief was an unconscious attempt to return to his original programming on Connor's part, but he had failed in doing that as well.

 _Failure all around. And yet-_

And yet Hank had said he loved him.

"Hank loves me," Connor whispered with a quiet awe in his voice, the concept still too new, too alien, too _human_ for him to fully wrap his head around it.

"How weak," RK900 snorted derisively. "Humans truly are inferior."

Connor's first instinct was to defend Hank against this assessment. Because the detective might have his flaws – with susceptibility to self-harm being the one that worried Connor the most – but even when Hank was at his lowest, drunkenly sobbing in Connor's arms after the android had stopped him from a suicide attempt, Connor had never thought of Hank as _weak_.

He had only recently started to fathom the enormity of the sway emotion held over humans, as he began to experience it himself – the gush of fear when he saw Hank put the gun to his own temple, the overwhelming helplessness when the killer left him bleeding on the cold ground with his thirum pump reaching critical failure – but he already came to a conclusion that it made humans strong, not weak, if they could still function with all of _that_ clouding their reasoning every day.

Besides, emotions were not all bad; he wouldn't willingly give up the joy he felt when he watched Sumo chase colorful autumn leaves, or the way his heart threatened to leap out of his chest when just a moment ago in the tunnels, Hank looked at him with such gentleness as though Connor was made of glass and a mere look could break him.

Connor naturally couldn't tell RK900 about all this; he was not sure he understood it properly himself, even after having weeks to come to terms with all those feelings, while RK900 had only just been activated.

But he could approach the problem in another way, Connor realized. There was a certain flaw in RK900's logic, and he decided to start from there.

"Why are you on the humans' side, then, if you find them so contemptible?" he challenged the other android.

"I am on no one's 'side'. I am simply a machine fulfilling my mission. Obeying my orders," RK900 droned mechanically, his slate-grey eyes fixed at something behind Connor.

 _Probably the army approaching the barricades,_ Connor thought despondently. Any minute now, RK900 was going to finish him off and go after the leader of the revolution. His immobile state left Connor with no other options but to try to talk the other android out of fulfilling his mission, for all the good it might do.

"And passing ….judgments…. on the human race is…. part of your orders?" Connor asked, proud of himself for mustering a slightly mocking tone even though his chest fell like it was going to cave in any minute now. He tried not to think too much about his new, fragile thirium pump being crushed under the heavy weight.

RK900 didn't say anything to that, just shifting his eyes back to Connor and gazing down at him silently for so long that Connor started to entertain a chilling thought that maybe this android was behaving as illogically as any deviant, but his particular brand of irrationality lied in _cruelty_. Then RK900 finally spoke up.

"I received an order to kill you, specifically. However, my core mission was to stop the android revolution and as you had no part in it, killing you seemed unrelated to that. Superfluous, even. You were deviant, true, but the army was already tasked to dispose of all androids, deviants in particular, so why target a specific one? I couldn't help but… wonder."

Connor didn't dare to get his hopes up much, but couldn't help but think that the fact that RK900 questioned his orders suggested a tentative personhood, the tiniest buds of free will.

"That was before I saw your memories," RK900 added flatly.

"You saw-" Connor started to say, but cut himself right off. _Of course he did_ , he thought with no small amount of bitterness. The first thing RK900 did when he appeared in Hank's little back garden was grab Connor's hand and force Connor to connect with him. Having the privacy of his mind invaded in such way already felt horrible, and that was before RK900 made Connor relive everything that happened to him back in CyberLife.

"I saw what happened at the Mojave Motel, and then I understood."

Of all possible things Connor expected RK900 to say, this was not one of them. What could the other android possibly understand by watching Connor's near death from the hands of a serial killer?

RK900 continued:

"Just like I had suspected, my orders to kill you had nothing to do with my core mission. They were in fact nothing but a convenient way to silent an uncomfortable witness to a crime, one that is considered particularly grievous by human society whose interests I was supposedly protecting. As the situation stood, I found myself… conflicted. When you attempted self-destruction, I must admit that I entertained an irrational hope that you'd survive, somehow."

Connor stared at him with his eyes wide open, for a moment almost forgetting about the wad of cement crushing his ribcage. What RK900 had just said was astonishing in more ways than one; Connor didn't say anything for a while as he had troubles to process all this information. It was true that he didn't need oxygen to stay alive, but its lack sorely decreased his analytical powers.

He simply couldn't _think._

At some point, his eyes must have slipped shut because they snapped back open at a sound of the now familiar voice of Gavin Reed screaming his name.

"Get the fuck away from Connor before I shoot you in the face!" Gavin Reed yelled at RK900 as he ran towards them with his gun pointed at the crouching android.

RK900 slowly raised himself into standing position, looming over both of them.

"You think you can stop me?" he asked Gavin with a quirk of his eyebrows. "I am the most advanced prototype CyberLife has ever made, superior to any human in terms of speed, strength and durability. It'd take a lot more than your little gun to take me down," RK900 said with an unmistakably mocking emphasis on the word 'little'.

"Let's find out, Mr. Most-Advanced-Prototype," Gavin sneered and bared his teeth in a predatory smile, pushing the safety off.

"Wait," Connor managed to choke out, feeling the weight crush him into the ground. "He's no longer… our enemy."

"You what, _converted_ him?" Gavin asked in disbelief as he was visited by a vivid image of Connor singing "wololo" in a hypnotic voice until RK900's uniform changed color. "Then why did you leave Connor like this?" he barked at the taller android.

 _That is a very good point_ , Connor thought distantly.

"My chest… hurts…" he said aloud, his voice filling with static.

RK900 gave him a mildly surprised look.

"Oh. Based on your model characteristics, I estimated your feelings as those of minor discomfort. You should have said something."

"If you ever got half a wall on your chest, I'll make sure to remember it's just a minor discomfort to you," Gavin snorted, already trying to lift the concrete block off Connor's chest, albeit with little success. "Care to show some of that superior strength and lend me a hand here?" he snapped at RK900, who obediently grabbed hold of the other end of the slab. Between the two of them, they finally managed to free Connor of his burden.

After that, Connor struggled to lift himself into a sitting position, wincing a little at the pain in his ribs. A brief diagnostics told him there was just some bruising, nothing cracked. However, he remembered Hank complaining that bruised ribs still hurt like hell, and had to concur.

Of course Connor's predicament would seem like a 'minor discomfort' to RK900 who did not possess pain sensors, which Connor himself only acquired during his refabrication. He mentally winced at the memory of his kidnappers thoroughly testing them by inflicting all sort of extremely unpleasant things on his body, wondering whether he could go back to his factory setting and stop feeling pain. But considering that he heard of androids starting to feel pain anyway when they became deviants, that was probably a moot point.

Moreover, his pains sensors were interconnected with his pleasure ones; a package deal, Hank would probably call it. And he wasn't ready to give up _those_ , not before he even had a chance to try them out properly.

But now wasn't the time for such idle thoughts. Feeling like he could speak normally again, even though breathing still made his ribs ache a little, Connor addressed a question to RK900.

"What about your core mission?"

"Aborted," RK900 replied curtly. "I will not assassinate the revolution leader."

"What are you gonna do, then?" It was Gavin who asked this time, with suspicion plain on his face.

"I will help the revolution succeed. As I am the most advanced prototype CyberLife has ever made, I dare say that I've got the necessary skills to do so. In fact, I already have a plan," RK900 told him haughtily.

"I'm all ears," Gavin drawled, obviously not very impressed so far.

"You don't look composed completely of hearing organs," RK900 pointed out drolly. While Gavin rolled his eyes, Connor let out a small chuckle.

One would think CyberLife would fix that particular deficiency in the more advanced prototype, but apparently that wasn't the case.

He recalled his own humble beginnings as far as human vernacular was concerned and couldn't help feeling oddly fond, given that it was directed at someone who had almost caused his self-destruction mere hours earlier.

"Do you know how many RK900 units have been produced to this day?" RK900 asked Gavin.

"There are _more_ of you?" Gavin retorted with a sour grimace.

"Five thousand," RK900 answered his own question, completely ignoring Gavin's comment. "We were all programed in the same way. So the question here is – if I was able to see the merit in joining the revolution, why shouldn't they?"

…

Despite the relatively small area of the barricaded enclosure, it took Hank forever to find Connor after they got separated by the explosions, mostly because of the zero visibility in the white fog, and also because something went off right next to Hank's left ear, making him temporarily deaf on that side, and thus hopelessly off-balance.

The fog started to disperse about the same time Hank regained full hearing, and it was then when he finally found Connor sitting among the rubble, looking a little shaken but otherwise unharmed.

Gavin was standing next to the android, talking to someone whose back was turned to Hank. That someone was tall, broad and vaguely familiar, but Hank didn't really care who it was at the moment; his utmost priority was to make sure that Connor was safe.

He squatted down next to Connor. From this close, the android's face appeared a little ashen, but Hank at least couldn't see any blood on him.

"What happened, you okay?" he asked quietly.

"A concrete barrier fell on me, but I ran a diagnostics and I'm basically unharmed," Connor explained.

"That's good," Hank murmured, automatically raising a hand to caress the side of Connor's face. When he realized what he was doing, he changed the motion to ruffle the android's hair instead.

He cleared his throat awkwardly, fumbling for something to say. In the brief silence that ensued, he suddenly became aware of the conversation Gavin was having with the tall stranger.

"You don't seriously expect me to call you RK900 all the time, do you?" Gavin was asking in obvious exasperation.

"I don't see why not; it's a perfectly serviceable name," a deep baritone answered him.

"What the-" Hank started to say, his hand already reaching for his gun.

Connor quickly grabbed his wrist to stop him.

"RK900 is our ally now," he explained in hushed tones. Hank gave him a dubious look, but obediently put his gun back, trusting Connor's judgment in this.

"Soon there's gonna be five fucking thousand RK900s! Just imagine that if I address you like this, they're all gonna answer me in creepy unison. So much for stealthy infiltration!" Gavin spluttered.

"You can name me, then. I truly do not care," RK900 told him dispassionately. "But we don't have time for this now; please do it while we're on our way."

"Yeah, let's get going," Gavin growled and headed towards the direction of the sewers. "But I'm not your mother. Choose your own damn name," he barked over his shoulder.

"Alright then. Amhlaoibh Coinneach O'Maoldhomhnaigh," RK900 replied immediately, catching up with the human detective in a few long strides.

"Owlee- what? Is that Irish? You're not fucking Irish!" Hank could hear Gavin's protest even from afar, as well as RK900's answering shot:

"Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz."

"You're not Polish either!" was the last thing Hank and Connor heard before the duo disappeared in the crowd.

"I think it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship," Connor said serenely.

"If they don't kill each other first," Hank said in agreement and the two of them exchanged matching grins.

Their merriment didn't last long. In the next moment, Connor's expression turned to worry as his gaze fixed at something behind Hank.

Hank turned back and saw North and Markus standing at the far end of the barricades, looking at a solitary figure approaching them through the pristine white square.

When he realized who it was, his lips twisted in a snarl.

 _Of course that bag of dicks had to show up,_ he thought disgustedly. Then he noticed that Connor was trembling beside him.

"What's wrong?" he asked gently, afraid that Connor was actually in worse state than he had previously let him know.

"Hank, that man… he's the one who hurt me," Connor told him quietly.

At first, Hank didn't understand, but then it clicked.

"He sent RK900 after you."

"Yes, but that's not what I meant." Connor paused to take a deep breath, wincing a little in the process. He sought out Hank's gaze, and it seemed like his brown eyes were begging Hank to believe him.

"He's the one who stabbed me," he said softly.

"What?" Hank stared at Connor in incomprehension. That didn't make any sense whatsoever. It was so absurd that it simply couldn't be true.

But then again, Connor had absolutely no reason to make it up.

"Fuck, Connor!" he swore, his mind reeling. "You're not saying that-"

"Yes. That man is your serial killer."

* * *

 _A/N:_ _How did you like Nines logicking his way into deviancy? He and Gavin are the reason I had to split the last chapter in two – I couldn't let them steal the show from our boiz!_

 _Next up – the final chapter for real, with the serial killer's identity getting revealed (but I bet you've guessed it already)!_

 _If you can, leave me a comment, they are my red ice or something :D_


	23. Chapter 23

It took Hank a moment to wrap his head around that idea.

It was true that Perkins was an asshole right from the start of their sole brief interaction, one that ended with Hank punching the Special Agent in the face. But it simply couldn't be Richard Perkins who stabbed Connor, because the attack on Connor happened when the android offered himself as a bait to catch the Hummingbird perpetrator.

 _Unless they were the same person._

"Yes. FBI Special Agent Richard Perkins is the one who tried to kill Tom Iwashita. I can't prove it just yet, but I'm hundred percent sure he's behind the previous three murders as well," Connor confirmed it again for Hank while hugging his torso in what looked like an unconscious attempt to shield himself from a perceived threat. His eyes were worriedly following Markus as the android leader climbed over the barricades to hear what Perkins got to say.

Hank had a very bad feeling about that. If what Connor was saying was true – and Hank had no reasons not to believe him – they had to brace themselves for the worst.

A hand on his forearm made Hank turn his gaze back to Connor.

The android was no longer trembling; his face was still a little bit too pale, but it showed steely resolve.

"Do you trust me, Hank?"

Hank gave a simple nod in response. He didn't really have to think twice about that.

"Then please lend me your gun."

Hank's eyebrows shot up. Not so long ago, he had to almost force Connor to carry a damn pepper spray with the android fighting him every step of the way, and now he wanted his _gun_?

But Hank did trust Connor, probably unconditionally at this point. However unwise that was.

He handed his service weapon to the android, his only question being:

"You sure you can hit him from this far?"

…

Connor weighed the weapon in his hand, familiarizing himself with the feel of it.

He had asked Hank for his gun and Hank gave it to him without barely batting an eyelash, not even asking what Connor intended to do with it.

That amount of trust was wholly undeserved and Connor found it a little scary, yet somehow reassuring at the same time; emotions really were a strange thing.

Connor focused on the only question Hank did ask, one born out of sheer pragmatism.

According to his model characteristics, he should be able to hit a target at this distance with no difficulty.  
However, if the shot came from the barricades, there was a high chance of the army charging after them right away.

The explosives had been a mere warning; if the soldiers meant business, they'd all be slaughtered under a minute. The only things holding the armed troops back were the presence of the press and the public opinion, which was currently in the androids' favor, supporting their peaceful protest.

 _If the revolution turned violent, though..._

If he wanted to do this, he needed to somehow divert the army's attention from the androids at the barricades. He briefly explained this dilemma to Hank, his eyes never leaving Markus and Perkins.

He naturally couldn't hear anything they were saying from that far, and the angle in which they stood made lip-reading mostly impossible, but it was blindingly obvious that Perkins was making the android leader some kind of deal.

"I've got an idea," Hank told him. "Gimme a minute, I'll go talk to someone."

Just when Hank left, Connor saw Markus dart a quick look back to the barricades, a conflicted expression on his face. The revolution leader's eyes unerringly sought out North, to whom he was apparently really close.

Connor suddenly understood what the deal was about.

 _Surrender, betray everyone else and I'll ensure that you and she are spared._ Or something along these lines.

Connor remembered his own treacherous musings back in Hank's garden. In a moment of weakness, he had thought he would happily forgo the whole android rights movement if it meant he would simply get to stay alive and be with Hank.

He ran a fast preconstruction of the situation where Markus accepted Perkins's deal. Unsurprisingly, given that Perkins was who he was, it ended up with everyone dead, including Markus and North.

Perkins was speaking again, and this time it was him who sent a meaningful look in North's direction.

And here it was; a hint of hesitation in Markus's posture. Connor could see that his resolve was crumbling.

Connor didn't even bother to run the preconstruction of the other option now; it seemed like Markus would accept the deal. And he couldn't let that happen.

His eyes frantically searched for Hank, finally spotting him not that far away, in the middle of talking to a dark-haired man with a huge, lumpy backpack. The man nodded at something Hank said and pulled at two strings on the sides of his pack.

This baffling action led to an even more baffling result, when the backpack fell to the ground like an empty shell, revealing a pair of majestic wings that spanned at least twenty feet when unfurled.

A chorus of awed voices echoed through the barricades, mirroring exactly how Connor felt about the sight in front of him.

He had seen some examples of human augmentation, but they were all a matter of integrating modified android parts, such as enhanced eyes or limbs, into human bodies. And as androids themselves were created as mirror images of humans, there had never been an android with wings.

No, this was something else, something for which he lacked any frame of reference.

Nevertheless, Connor didn't have the time to ponder the exact nature of the winged stranger as the man started walking straight to him in long, resolute strides.

"How'd you feel about flying?" he asked Connor in a gravelly voice of a long-time heavy smoker.

Before Connor had a chance to answer, however, the man simply walked around him and grabbed him around the waist.

A dry "fasten your seatbelt" was the only warning Connor got before they were up in the air.

…

Connor had never thought he would fly. Before this morning, he hadn't thought he would ever use a gun, either. And now he was going to do both at the same time.

They were flying upwards at a dizzying speed, with icy air mercilessly whipping Connor's quickly numbing face. Yet Connor wasn't afraid as the winged man's grip around his waist stayed secure, never faltering. Once more he had to wonder who exactly it was that was carrying him in the air, but those questions could wait.

Now he had to focus all his attention on the figure of Richard Perkins that was becoming smaller and smaller on the snowbound plaza below.

Perkins was not a tall man to begin with, yet he had easily overpowered Connor before, stabbing him in the chest while hurling lewd insults at him with Connor doing nothing to stop it.

That was because Connor had not fought back.

He had told Hank before that he didn't use the pepper spray because Perkins was too fast, but the truth was that he himself was too slow. He had been reaching for the spray in his pocket when something held him back; a sort of red wall in his mind he hadn't been able to break.

 _Plastic whore, cheap little boy toy_ , his attacker had sneered at him, reflecting how Connor himself felt at that moment.

 _Toys don't fight back, and androids are forbidden from harming humans,_ ran through his reeling mind as he felt precious blue blood gushing from his chest, and the only thing he was capable of doing was sending Hank his GPS coordinates, thinking that if he got really lucky, he'd at least get to see Hank's face one last time before he'd shut down for good.

Things were different now.

Connor had learned that a pleasure android was not all he was meant to be; he thought of the fifty seven RK800 prototypes who were destroyed, and two more who got sold like pieces of meat. After what Hank told him in the tunnels, he no longer hated himself for the decision to spare the Chloe, but his heart still ached for those androids.

 _His people_ , something inside him whispered.

In the end, though, it didn't really matter what or who he was. He just knew that this was his chance to redeem himself. If he let Markus take the deal, his people would be doomed. If Connor prevented it, they might still be saved.

He had to do it. For Helen and Alessandro. For North, Markus and the revolution.

For Hank.

 _For himself._

Finally, the red wall in his mind came crumbling down, just as the winged man carrying him stopped his flight mid-air. From up here, Perkins looked as small as a toy he had accused Connor of being.

Connor breathed in the ice-cold air and tightened his numb fingers around Hank's gun. Then he pulled the trigger, aiming for the heart.

…

Hank awoke to a hand running through his hair in gentle, soothing motions. He leaned into it, focusing on the touch and on the fact that he was pressed to something, or rather someone soft and warm lying next to him. For a moment, he didn't know where he was or how he got there.

Hank opened his eyes and blinked against the weak light that bled through the half-open blinds. That light illuminated Connor's pale face hovering above him, bathing it in a soft golden glow that suggested it was already way past noon, rather than morning.

When Connor saw Hank open his eyes, he didn't say anything and just smiled at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

"What day is it?" Hank mumbled as everything started coming back to him in jumbled bits and pieces.

"It's November 19, 4:23 PM," Connor supplied promptly, slowly withdrawing his hand and patiently waiting for Hank to shake off the last vestiges of sleep.

Hank's brain was still sluggish, but he still managed to do the math.

 _Eight days after_.

The revolution, that was. The happenings on the Hart Plaza inevitably become a sharp cutting line dividing time into two seemingly disconnected blocks of _before_ and _after_ , and today was the first day of the _after_ Hank spent at home, so far all of it asleep. Connor had confirmed his suspicion that it was already afternoon, even though the last thing he remembered was arriving in the house some time at night.

"How long've I been asleep?" he rasped, his throat feeling parched like after a night of heavy drinking, even though he had not had a single alcoholic drink for- _how long was it now?_

 _At least eight days_ , he realized with a start, just as Connor answered his question with, "you've been asleep for twelve hours and twenty seven minutes."

"Shit," Hank swore more out of habit than anything else. He remembered the insistence with which Jeffrey finally made him go home, after spending the week mostly working non-stop, barely pausing for quick naps right at the station. The Chief's patience finally evaporated when Hank had near collapsed right in the middle of their conversation.

"Not my fault you're so boring you make people fall asleep when you talk," Hank had grumbled in Fowler's direction, but obediently let Connor lead him to his car and finally drive him home from the station. Where the android technically had no right to even be, except maybe in a holding cell, but everyone chose to ignore that little fact and let Connor provide Hank with a constant supply of food and drink. And if he had looked over Hank's shoulder to see what the detective was working on once or twice, everyone chose to ignore that as well.

The past week still seemed like a blur, but Hank was able to at least put together a basic sequence of events as they happened.

After Perkins suddenly fell to his knees while clutching at his midsection, the army fortunately didn't charge right away as there had been some confusion along the lines of what the fuck was that winged thing doing up there. It turned out that there was a surprising number of soldiers who refused to attack what they perceived as an honest-to-God angel, despite express orders from the higher-ups to take it down.

A chopper was eventually dispatched to pursue Castor, but he managed to flee to the wharfs where he lost it. It was quite a miracle that he didn't lose _Connor_ on the way, too.

Meanwhile, the army was finally ordered to attack the barricades head on, but it was at that moment when Gavin and RK900 returned with five thousand freshly converted androids – all cutting-edge and combat-ready just like the original RK900 (who got eventually stuck with the moniker 'Nines' when Gavin got tired of his over-creative attempts to name himself) – which tipped the scale in the revolution's favor.

Afterwards, androids were immediately recognized as sentient beings and a few days later also as a special category of American citizens. Their specific legal status and rights were still being negotiated, but they were already allowed to hold paid jobs and own property, which was an incredibly fast development, compared to the speed at which the judicial system usually operated.

Basically, all was well, except for the minor detail of Connor facing charges for manslaughter.

By all rights, it should actually have been murder. He had aimed for the heart, after all, and he admitted as much to Hank.

Over the past week, Hank however told him repeatedly and with great emphasis that he should never confess to that before the court, and Connor heeded this advice, even though he complained that lying like that didn't feel right.

"It's just that our justice system really doesn't like vigilantes," Hank had explained. "It should have been me going there and arresting him, even though the bastard would just laugh into my face and tell me I didn't have a warrant, not you shooting him. From legal point of view, you had zero grounds for taking that shot. He wasn't actively threatening anyone at the moment, he was 'negotiating with the terrorists' – even though you and me know that's bullshit – so you'd go down for murder if you confessed to the intent of killing him, revolution or not. Trust me, we'll get a lot more maneuvering space with manslaughter."

"You sound like my lawyer," Connor had said, smirking a little despite the gravity of the situation.

"God forbid," Hank had grimaced in distaste. "Always hated those. But you'll say shit like that yourself in no time; it's part of the job."

Connor had looked at him a little strangely then, but they had other far more pressing concerns, so Hank let it slide.

Right now, Hank's bladder was threatening to explode after his long sleep, so he excused himself and hauled himself up from the bed, lightly brushing a hand along Connor's side as he did so.

In the bathroom, he dreaded looking in the mirror, because he was fully aware he must look like hell after he had been running himself ragged those last few weeks, on top of being on the wrong side of fifty and looking it even on his better days.

Connor, on the other hand, was a gorgeous young thing, and thanks to the new laws he was no longer anyone's property, not even Hank's. He was free to go wherever he wanted to, free to do anything with anyone he desired.

Hank noticed he had been sitting on the closed toilet lid for an eternity, despondently staring at the yellow tiles above his bathtub, only when his stomach gave out a loud grumble. He realized he was starving, which was no wonder as he had not eaten properly in days, despite Connor's best efforts to force-feed him while he threw himself into closing the Hummingbird case on top of dealing with the aftermath of the revolution.

As if on cue, a waft of something enticing entered his nostrils, making him finally leave the bathroom and follow the smell into the kitchen.

When he entered the room, he was immediately mauled by Sumo who had been left in Helen's and Alessandro's care for the last week and couldn't wait to finally slobber all over his rightful owner's face.

"Wonder why I even bothered with washing," Hank grumbled in a show of mock annoyance as a particularly enthusiastic lick left a trail of saliva right on his nose, but he didn't stop running his hands all over the big dog's back and flanks, petting him for so long that his meal had been long done by the time Sumo finally went to curl on his bed in bliss.

Just as he hoped, Connor made him fried eggs, for once not replacing butter with olive oil or something equally blasphemous.

"I know it's a little late for breakfast, but most of the food in the fridge has gone bad, so my options were rather limited. I'll make you proper dinner later after I do the shopping," Connor said while scooping the eggs on a plate, throwing a quick look over his shoulder to flash a smile in Hank's direction.

Hank noticed that Connor was wearing the laughing pineapple shirt they had bought together on their first and only shopping trip, which had felt like a lifetime ago.

He still thought it was a ridiculous shirt, and also that it looked ridiculously good on Connor. He was suddenly overcome by a desire to come behind the android, put his hands around his waist and press his body against him; he wanted it so bad that it was almost physically painful to suppress.

Yet Hank somehow managed to subdue that impulse; he sat down at the kitchen table and focused instead on how relieved he was to see Connor safe and sound. He couldn't help but feel glad that Perkins was gone for good.

It didn't look like that at first. Connor did aim for the heart, but he missed; hitting a moving target from a moving position is no small feat. The bullet hit Perkins in the abdomen instead and he was taken to a hospital by paramedics while still alive but unconscious.

Had it been a movie, Perkins would later make a dramatic escape from the ER and try to kill them all whilst delivering a long-winded villain speech, in which he would amply explain his nefarious plans.

What really happened was that Perkins died from the shock of his gunshot wound, just slipping away quietly one night after three days spent in a coma. If he had any last words, there was no one around to hear them.

Afterwards, Connor finally told Hank what he had learned from Tom Iwashita: that Perkins went hunting for his potential victims – young boys struggling with their sexuality – to the Twinkle Lounge. He then pretended to befriend his victims and later lured them to some deserted place to kill them.

When Connor had learned about the Twinkle Lounge and the usual time of the suspect's visits to the establishment, he contacted Gavin Reed, of whom he had earlier formed an impression of a ruthless, career driven detective, and quickly formulated a plan in which he served as a bait. He looked young enough to attract Perkins's attention, and he was less fragile than a human fitting this profile, which made him an ideal candidate.

This plan was successful, up to a point. Based on little Tom's description, Connor was able to identify his attacker in the crowd, spotting him talking to another youth. He made his way to the pair through the dancing crowd and soon found a way to take the boy's place.

When Connor hinted at finding out he liked his male friends just a bit too much and admitted that he didn't know what to do with that discovery, Perkins started chatting him up in no time, telling Connor that he _understood what he's going through, been there himself,_ and that _coming out in an unsupportive environment is really tough_ , with an indulgent smile that didn't really reach his eyes.

The eyes in question looked ordinary brown, without a single speck of red in them. But that didn't come as a surprise, because he'd hardly manage to lure any victims if there was anything so ostensibly suspicious about him.

Everything was going smoothly, but while he and Perkins were still talking, Connor got a message from Gavin announcing a change of plans. The message told him that the team had to leave due to a terrorist threat, and ordered him to retreat immediately.

But Connor ignored it, even though shortly afterwards Perkins broke the pattern and proposed a love motel tryst right away, instead of just exchanging phone numbers and communicating with him over some time as he had most probably done with the previous victims.

Connor had a good idea about the nature of the 'terrorist threat' Gavin's team was called to; the android-human conflict had been brewing for some time, and its outbreak could affect his life in unimaginable ways. There might not be another chance to catch Perkins, who as an FBI agent surely had a way to doctor evidence in his favor.

Therefore Connor decided to ignore Gavin's orders and accept Perkins's invitation, despite being on his own.

That had been incredibly reckless on his part.

In retrospect, Connor realized that Perkins must have used some fleeting moment when Connor's attention was directed elsewhere to turn on his special vision, finding out that Connor was actually an android. Another possibility was that he had already been familiar with RK900's appearance and extrapolated from that, as Connor looked almost identical.

That, together with Connor actively seeking him out, aroused Perkins's suspicion, and he decided to get rid of the perceived threat, attempting to kill Connor in the love motel.

Later, when he learned that Connor survived, he tried to have him killed by RK900.

That was about all that they knew firsthand. Perkins's eyes were analyzed post-mortem, revealing a scanner not unlike those androids possessed, giving him the ability to gather all kinds of information about the people and objects surrounding him just by looking at them. They were further enhanced with infrared vision and heightened attention to detail. That explained why his crime scenes always looked swept clean of all evidence.

In relation to this, they were looking for the Healer to make sure he was the source of Perkins's augmented vision, but so far the search turned up nothing, just like Hank expected.

All they kept stumbling upon were various rumors and urban legends; one of them basically reiterated what Hank had learnt from one of the augments, stating that the Healer was a medical android, with the added embellishment of the deep crack in the Healer's face being caused by an angry relative of a patient the android had failed to save.

This hit rather close to home for Hank, reminding him of the android surgeon who couldn't save his son. For the first time in three years, however, the pain in his heart that the reminder caused had felt somehow less piercing, more like a dull ache. The wound was still there, and probably always will be, but it was no longer gaping open.

There were other tales about the Healer, somewhat more outlandish. Like the one claiming that he provided android features to humans like Meghan and Perkins not because he was trying to help them achieve their goals (whatever those might be), but because he had his own secret agenda of bringing about a creation of a blended species, half-human and half-android.

Or – that one was shared mostly by androids – that he was _ra9_.

And let us not forget Hank's personal favorite – that the Healer was actually Elijah Kamski dressed in an android suit, fucking with them all.

Only one thing was certain; there really was no sense in looking for him.

As for Perkins's modus operandi, it was now completely clear that he left the 'ra9' and 'I'M ALIVE' writings at the Michael Browning's murder scene – and intended to do the same in the barracks where he tried to kill Tom Iwashita, but was interrupted by the Latino chicken keeper – to make the blame fall on androids. Even though it had seemed impossible at first for the perpetrator to copy the writings from Ortiz's murder, that was only because no one thought of an FBI culprit who had access to police information much sooner than the press did.

Because Perkins died in the hospital, his exact motivations remained a mystery for quite some time. Enquiries were made into his past, eventually unearthing a possible history of sexual abuse by an older male cousin.

And that was that.

Hank polished his plate off and looked up at Connor sitting across him to thank him for the delicious meal, when he noticed that the android's eyes were strangely distant.

"A penny for your thoughts?" he suggested.

"I just don't understand why he did it," Connor said with an unhappy frown. "Shouldn't such people be sympathetic towards the abused, not the opposite? Why would he want to kill those boys?"

Hank sighed.

"You should take some psychology classes before joining the force, Connor. Then you'd learn all about some fucked-up coping mechanisms we humans have. It's called the cycle of abuse – the abused turns into an abuser to finally get in control, to feel powerful, that sort of thing. We will never know for sure in Perkins's case, but I bet you it's something like this."

Connor nodded in assent. Then his eyes widened a fraction as a realization dawned. This was the second time Hank mentioned something like this; the first time Connor noticed it, he thought it was just a slip of the tongue on Hank's part. After all what happened, Connor expected Hank to categorically forbid him from becoming a detective, not _encourage_ him.

"You want me to join the police?" he asked for confirmation.

Hank looked at him like he had just said something blindingly obvious.

"Well, I assumed that was what _you_ wanted, what with you playing detective first behind my back and then even _against my express wishes_. Unless you're planning to tour with a Radiohead revival act or something," Hank added to finish on a lighter note.

That lured a smile out of Connor.

"I'd have to practice some more for that. But you're right, I quite enjoyed detective work, a lot more than doing household chores. But I would have enjoyed… other things, if you let me," Connor added, looking up at Hank from behind his eyelashes.

Hank cleared his throat, feeling his face getting hot. There was no point in pretending he didn't know what Connor meant by that. They had been circling around that topic ever since the moment when Hank let Connor kiss him for the first time, but they never got much further than that.

This time was going to be different, Hank could tell. The atmosphere suddenly became electric with anticipation.

"Did you know that I have the ability to feel not just pain, but pleasure as well?" Connor asked softly, his eyes boring into Hank's with burning intensity.

All Hank could muster was a dumb shake of his head. He didn't know that, although it shouldn't really come as much of a surprise.

"Do you remember the time we kissed in the park, and then at the house?"

Hank swallowed. Of course he remembered.

"When you touched me, I actually felt so much pleasure that I feared that some of my circuits would overheat. That's why I had to fall back on some… scripted conversation," Connor admitted with a tint of blue on his cheeks indicating embarrassment.

"Scripted- wait, you mean that moment when you suddenly started to parrot a porn flick at me?" Hank stared at him incredulously. There was no way he could forget _that_.

"You turned me down," Connor said in a small voice.

"Jeez, Connor, it was like you suddenly became a completely different person!" Hank defended himself. "I'm sorry that I found it sort of a turn off. But no bigger than when you went and said you didn't want me anyway."

"I never said that!" Connor objected heatedly. "My exact words were, and I quote, 'androids cannot want things.'" Connor suddenly paused and frowned. "In retrospect, that particular misunderstanding was my fault, and I'm sorry to have confused you. I should have said 'may not', not 'cannot' as it was the lack of permission I was referring to, not ability."

"Huh?" Hank stared at him in incomprehension.

"What I mean is that I did want you, even though I knew it wasn't allowed. But I didn't understand it then," Connor said quietly while holding Hank's gaze.

 _And now you do?_

Thatwas what Hank wanted to ask, but the words got stuck in his throat at the sight of the earnestness in Connor's brown eyes, in the soft curve of his mouth, in the way his right hand was resting on the table palm up, all but waiting for Hank to gather his courage and cross the short distance between them.

But he didn't have that courage, so he just stared helplessly at Connor for a moment before he realized something was different from the time he had woken up. There was a blue LED diode on Connor's temple where there had been nothing for more than a week.

"You've put your mood ring back," Hank observed aloud.

Connor simply nodded, not offering any explanations. Hank, though, couldn't quite contain his curiosity.

"Why put it back now? I heard that a lot of androids got rid of theirs for good. They see it as sign of servitude or something," he commented.

"Yet others see these diodes as a symbol of their identity and choose to preserve them," Connor replied in a neutral tone.

"Huh. So that's why you put it back. Makes sense," Hank nodded sagely.

The corner of Connor's mouth quirked up in amusement.

"I didn't say that. When we used to play that game where we made observations about people we saw on the street, you always told me I shouldn't jump to conclusions," he quipped at Hank.

"Should've made me some coffee if you wanted me to use my higher brain functions," Hank mumbled disgruntledly.

"I thought you've had enough caffeine in the past week to last you a lifetime. But I guess I could make you just one more cup," Connor conceded benevolently, already raising from the table.

"It's fine," Hank stopped him, waving the android back to his chair. "You shouldn't cater to my every whim, anyway. But I don't feel like playing guessing games with you right now, Connor. Why did you put your light back?" he asked bluntly.

"I want you to better understand what I'm thinking," Connor explained simply.

Hank blinked at him. This was unexpected, to say the least. Then a thought occurred to him.

"Wouldn't that put you at disadvantage? It's not like I can get one of those," he argued, lightly tapping his temple.

Connor's features turned serious.

"You must realize that we've had some… _misunderstandings_ in the past," he said carefully.

 _That was putting it mildly_ , Hank thought, reliving the moments when Connor had to bear with his drunkenness, with his depression, with him trying to keep his distance to save himself from pain, not caring about how it affected the android.

Hell, Hank forced him to witness his fucking _suicide attempt_ and the saddest thing was that it wasn't even the worst of it, oh no; Hank rather thought that that dubious prize went to the moment where he failed to keep Connor safe from Perkins, not once but _twice_ within the same twenty-four hours, and, had it not been first for the Healer and then for Gavin, Connor would have _died_.

Hank suddenly found breathing difficult as he imagined where this conversation was going.

 _Connor was free to go anywhere, to be with anyone,_ a voice in his mind reminded him. Why would he stay with the drunken mess that was Hank Anderson, with a bunch of issues that no one in their right mind would want to touch with a ten-foot pole, and a blatant inability to protect the people he loved?

At the sight of whatever was the expression that Hank was wearing, Connor's LED light briefly turned into spinning yellow. Then he reached out to take Hank's hand, running his thumb alongside Hank's palm in a soothing gesture. He tended to do that a lot, touching Hank like one would a frightened animal.

Hank found out that he didn't mind.

"I don't need you to have an LED diode to see what you're thinking about right now. Please stop and listen to me, Hank. I want you, I love you, and I'm not going anywhere. Except back to the bedroom. With you," Connor said pointedly.

 _Then why did you try to self-destruct when I told you that I felt that way about you_ , ran through Hank's head, but he refrained from voicing this thought aloud. His higher brain functions might still have been somehow addled, but he now realized that an android's self-destruction protocol wasn't something that could be stopped with mere words, no matter how much raw emotion they conveyed; declarations of undying love would hardly stop bullets, so why would this be any different?

Connor had not been himself at that moment, so there was no point in holding his actions against him.

And if this beautiful person capable of solving crimes and shooting murderers from the sky as well as forcing Hank to eat his vegetables and playing guitar only slightly off-key told Hank that he loved him now, when he was obviously fully in control of his own mind and actions, Hank had no reason not to believe him, no matter how undeserving he felt.

And no reason not to say those words back, this time getting a vastly more preferable reaction: Connor rose from his seat, tugging at their still joined hands until Hank did the same and they were both standing so close that they were almost touching, and then there was no 'almost' about it. Hank's arms snaked around Connor's waist, pulling him even closer.

Connor returned the hug, tucking his head under Hank's chin.

They stayed like that for a while, just enjoying the closeness.

When Connor finally broke the embrace, it was to look up at Hank with his lips parted in a gentle invitation.

They had kissed before, but this time, something was different.

For the first time, they were meeting like two equals, with no misunderstandings between them.

Oh, Hank was sure there would be plenty of those in the future; Hank still had issues, and by now, he was pretty sure that so did Connor, as his short life had been rather eventful. Furthermore, Hank's job was tough and time-consuming, which was one of the factors that had contributed to his divorce; he was aware it could put a strain on his relationship with Connor as well. He really hoped that they'd somehow manage to clear Connor of the manslaughter charges and get him to work at the DPD as well, but he knew that achieving that wouldn't be easy.

But he was sure that somehow, they'd do all right. Because despite everything that happened, they _did_ do alright until now, given the circumstances. He couldn't help but feel a little proud, of both of them.

Their kiss ended, and Hank raised his hand to trace the blue circle on Connor's temple with his fingers.

 _Like a traffic light in Japan,_ he thought all of a sudden as an old memory came to his mind, unbidden.

It was the summer after his sophomore year of college when he used all his savings and went on a two-week road trip across Japan, just by himself. He was dimly aware he visited all the tourist traps: Tokyo Tower (the much higher Sky Tree was still on the drawing table at that time), the Temple of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, the magnificent Himeji Castle – he got the bonsai he kept on his office desk from a shop nearby. He still got the pictures somewhere; if he browsed through them, he might remember some more details about these places, but most of those memories had long since faded.

But what came to him vividly just now was one of the first days of that bygone trip, a warm July evening when he walked on foot through some small town whose name he didn't remember, and stopped at a crossing to wait for the green light.

Except when the light finally changed, it wasn't green, but blue. _What the hell, even the traffic lights here look different_ , Hank had thought then, but he didn't find it vexing at all; quite to the contrary, that little detail seemed exhilarating, full of promises of adventures in a strange new country he could explore.

And that was exactly how he felt right now when he looked at Connor.

He was embarking on a new adventure and that lovely, clear blue light gave him permission to do so.

 _Go on, you can have this._

And Hank went, following the light.

* * *

 **THE END**

* * *

 _A/N: That's all she wrote! This is the first novel-length fanfic I managed to finish, and even though I'm aware of its many flaws (the lack of detailed descriptions to support all the dialogues being the most glaring one), I am kind of proud of myself to get there at all, and I want to say thank you to all of you who cheered me along the way and fed my completely unhealthy praise kink :)_

 _Special thanks go to my dearest friend – whose name is very similar to that of the main character of this fic ;) - who was my sounding board, patient enough to listen to me rambling about this story for hours. And sorry I failed at that one Gavin scene._

 _NorthernSparrow, one of my favorite fan fic authors, likes to include a Methods and Materials chapter at the end of her stories. I won't go as far, but for those interested, I'd also like to add a few words on the origin of this story and some related stuff._

 _One of my favorite thing to do is to take what I considered a completely crack idea and treat it as seriously as I can, which is also the case here – "what if Hank came home and found a sexbot in his kitchen" was the original idea I got while picking some red currant (a lot of my ideas actually occur when doing something like that)._

 _Before I got to post the first chapter, I had to decide on the title, and went for a line from a beautiful Bloc Party song called Blue Light. It is a song about redemption, and that's what I wanted this story to be – about Connor somehow saving Hank, as he does it in (at least some plays of) the game. So the general idea, or the message if you will, was there from the start, but the same cannot be said about the particularities of the plot._

 _My writing style could be described as "intuition first, intellect second". What it means that I just felt like mentioning some seemingly random things, like Meghan with her red eyes, without knowing at the time what this would mean for the plot. That only came later._

 _Writing like this is a lot like flying blind; I usually could only see one chapter ahead of me, with nothing more than brief flashes of things to come later, although by the end of Arc 1 I also had something like general outline of the main things I wanted to happen in the story, and I managed to stick to it in most parts._

 _It also became a game of 'let's see how many canon events from Hank and Connor's storyline I can fit into this AU' for me, and I think I've done quite well on that front, if I say so myself :)._

 _I think I managed to convey some character development in Hank's case, and I hope I did a little of that for Connor as well, though it wasn't the point of this fic, as it's really focused on Hank. That's why I also stuck to Hank's POV whenever it was possible. If Connor were to tell his side of the story from the beginning, it might be definitely very interesting, but it'd be a different fic altogether._

 _For those who hoped for some more smut at the end – it didn't fit into the story as it is, but I might write a smutty time-stamp (plus others) in the same universe if I feel like it._

 _I mentioned NorthernSparrow, whose specialty is Supernatural and destiel – the character of Castor is a shout-out to her stories Forgotten and Flight (some of the most mind-blowing and lovely pieces of fiction I've ever read) where Castiel hides his wings in a huge backpack._

 _Finally, I mentioned earlier I'd do a playlist for this story. It turns out I don't quite know how to go about that, but if I did one, it would naturally include Blue Light by Bloc Party, the entire album Broken Machine by Nothing But Thieves as it totally seems as though it was inspired by DBH (and the band's singer, who has one of the most amazing voices ever, is coincidentally named Conor), and last but not least, the hauntingly beautiful music by Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds. I encountered his music thanks to Hank and Connor, in form of a gorgeous YouTube music video called So Close by chaotic neutral. I had a bunch of Arnalds's favorites while writing (Fok, Ekki hugsa, Undir, Tree, Near Light, Raien, just to mention a few), but anything this musical genius made is definitely worth listening to._

 _And that's really it from me. If you have any thoughts on this story, I'd be delighted to hear them._


End file.
